Miatatude

Hi Scott

Last Friday when we were having dinner out with friends discussion turned to the “Good Ol’ Days” of the MMC, say back about 9 or 10 years ago. We reminisced on old events and past members. One event that we did 2 years in a row and was deemed fun in the haze of foggy memories was a photo scavenger hunt. I had borrowed the idea from an Australian Miata Club and Americanized it. The Folks were divided into teams, given a disposable camera and tasks to complete of various levels that were worth points. Quest #3 in the first year was:

A picture of a Miata owner (and his/her car) that is not in the Miata Club:
100 points for a picture of them in their car.
Bonus 250 points if you get them to join the Club.
An additional bonus 500 points if you get them to join in the hunt and come to lunch with you.

One team managed just that feat. I kind of suspect that it really didn’t take too much to get Scott Rushton to be the 850 point man as his boss, the Sales Manager of the local Mercedes/Mazda dealer, was a member of the Green Team that brought him in. Scott sold me the Emperor and we lost touch a few years later when both he and his boss found themselves out of the car business when the dealership dropped the Mazda product line.

Donna and I have never clicked physically with the local Geocaching group, but we signed up in the beginning to their YahooGroups email list and still belong. Occasionally for what ever internal reason someone rubs someone else the wrong way starting a flame war with sides being taken. But it is mostly filled with congratulatory missives once anyone passes any kind find milestone that ends in two zeros (from hundreds to thousands.) The Saturday morning after that dinner I was reading the email digest of the previous day’s email when I spot a familiar looking email address, lowdollar99@xxxxx.com. Could it be who I’m thinking it is? So I scope out the user name on Geocaching.com and sure enough, it is Scott Rushton. How come I never noticed that before?

The day after he comes up in conversation about Miatas, I notice he is into geocaching too. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 621

Miscellaneous Monday

Added a link in the Miata section called Miata Mondays. It is from a site called Cold Track Days and features a photo every Monday of a tricked out Miata.

Watching LOST last week, every time they showed Jack standing there in his dark blue t-shirt I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance to the protagonist in that video game Another World that I so loved, but couldn’t get to work back in December.

There are only 3 episodes and the two hour finale left of TDTVS and then it will be all over on Sunday, May 23 (why Sunday?) But that’s OK maybe they will make Saturday morning cartoon of the show.

You know how I spent a couple hours the other day ridding my work PC of ClearType after the Office 2007 install? Well guess what is running on the home laptop and hasn’t bothered me one bit?

House viewers must buy a lot of trucks or someone thinks they do because the big three have all run truck ads during tonight’s show.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 612

Dirty Car

The Emperor is filthy. Tree sap from parking in the wrong spot somewhere, pine pollen, dead bugs and mud from an aborted geocache attempt cover the exterior. The inside isn’t much better, pine pollen there too, plenty of dirt and debris in the mats, plus some stray M & M Minis under the seats.

I need to wait though and get the driveway cleaned off first. Adding water to it’s current coating of pine pollen (surprise), oak pollen clusters and dogwood blossom petals would create an awful soup.

I need to wait on cleaning the driveway until I blow off the roof, which is covered in, well, you can guess.

Ahhh, spring.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 592

LOB Now Turbocharged

This “button” has been sitting here in the upper right corner of my WordPress admin page for the longest time. Tonight I clicked it and it installed something called Google Gears. I’m not sure if it is supposed to speed up the blog for me or you, but I do know if it keeps asking to connect to the Google mothership it is coming out.

The trunk on the Miata looks like someone dusted for prints using yellow instead of black powder,there are yellow tire tracks on my garage floor when I back out in the morning and Tiger Woods’ Green Jacket is now a neon lime green. Pine pollen season and the Masters are in town.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 580

Little Boy Blue

The Folks in the MMC don’t know it yet, but tonight is Donna and my last Club meeting. Regular readers will remember that a couple months ago I was virtual car shopping, well we have decided on a car. It was not on the original list in either category because it fell outside the theoretical budget limit, and if recent events have taught us anything it is you only live once, so you might as well enjoy yourself while you can.

The local dealer didn’t have what we wanted, but a quick search turned up almost a perfect match, satellite radio instead of the Ip Odd interface, in Charleston, SC. We will be able to pick it up on Friday at Taylor BMW in Augusta. With trading in the Emperor, $2k additional down, we ended up financing $28,000 @ 3.95% or $475 a month for the next 6 years…

Meet Little Boy Blue: a BMW 128i Convertible.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 578

Way Behind

I am either way behind in blogging about the oil changes on the Emperor or just way behind in actually doing one. My routine has been to change the oil every 3,750 miles, which is exactly twice as often as Mazda recommends and while I’m at it I rotate the tires from front to back. But the last time I mention an oil change was on September 6th, which judging by my Miata Mileage posts would put it at around 95.5K or about 9,000 miles ago!

This Saturday I’m going to do the oil change slash rotate the tires thing. Unless I forget to buy oil or it rains or…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 551

Onions Are Like Underwear…

…you gotta have ’em. Or so said a contestant on Chopped this evening.

This morning we met the MMC for breakfast in Augusta and Donna and I left a bit early with plans to do a little geocaching on the way. Well it turned out we weren’t that early and didn’t stop anywhere. There was a cache that was located right behind the shopping center where breakfast was to be, so we walked around to grab it before going inside. With the title and the hint we think we found a part of the cache, but the actual container didn’t appear to be around. Dang.

The eleven of us finished eating by 8:15 and we were then stuck, the bowling alley, our post breakfast entertainment, didn’t open until 9:00. We stood around outside the door of the restaurant chatting and watching someone in a truck in the parking lot tossing bread out of his window feeding seagulls. After the novelty of that wore off, we trooped down to Kmart (the only other place that was open in the center) and shopped for blue light specials. Tiring of this Donna and I said, “We’ll meet you there.” There was geocache right down the street. Found it, yeah!

A couple of games of bowling was quite enough (my wrist was sore by frame 5 of the second game) and most of the group were busy picking out a lunch place while Donna and I and another couple walked 2/10 of a mile to behind a restaurant to try and find a cache that was hidden there. It was sprinkling slightly and GZ was between the back of the restaurant and its dumpsters, it wasn’t the tidiest place, so we gave up looking after about 3 or 4 minutes. Darn.

After our failure the 4 of us went our separate ways. Donna and I were going home, but couldn’t agree on what we wanted for lunch, so when we drove by the place the rest of the club had picked, we pulled in. It was BBQ place, not atypical as they had other meat items and seafood on the menu, called Flyin’ Cowboy. The food was slightly better than good and I could probably eat here 2 or 3 times a year, but probably won’t because it is 25 miles away. One of our group ordered a “Manhandler” which consisted of 6oz of pulled pork piled on top of a softball sized loaded baked potato. John was up to the task and finished the whole thing, along with both his side dishes, earning himself the title of “Potatohandler.”

To recap, on today’s Miata Club event, we all drove separately to a restaurant and had breakfast. Afterward we did some shopping together followed by driving to a bowling alley separately. We bowled a couple of games together and then drove separately to another restaurant and ate lunch. Well, at least some of us actually drove Miatas…

Here is the top count from yesterday, the first nice day since it seems like Thanksgiving. Today it was cold in the morning and now hasn’t stopped raining since this morning.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 521