Miatatude

I Guess I Should Have Opted For The Road Hazard Warranty

The car has been handling a little quirky recently and I figured it was time for an alignment. The car tracks straight when you let go of the wheel, but seems to need constant attention to keep it in the center of the lane. Almost felt like I needed new shocks, but that shouldn’t be an issue because I just had new one put on back in August.

It couldn’t be a low tire as I keep a pretty close watch on the pressure, checking it every Saturday along with the oil level. Wait a minute, the last couple of Saturdays I haven’t done it for one reason or another. Maybe I should go check. I just did. Right rear 27-1/2 psi. Right front 27-1/2 psi. Left front 27 psi. Left rear 15psi. Ruh-roh, Reorge! Dis-mounted the tire and found what looks like a small nail about 2 inches in from the sidewall. Should be able to get this one plugged, depending on how long it is. The last time I found a nail in the tread area it was so long that it tore into the sidewall. Judging by the diameter of this nail it won’t be that long.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 72

Old Skool Navigation System

Old Skool Navigation SystemOn the first weekend in March every year the Aiken branch of the American Association of University Women put on a Books & Things Fair. They never keep an accurate record of the number of books on sale, but estimates range around 50,000. Everything is donated, so 99% are used, but the variety is staggering. The sale runs on Friday and Saturday from 9 AM until around 5PM. Donna and I go every year on Saturday and putter around until we each get an armload of books and usually end up spending any where from $10 to $15.

This year is the first time it coincided with our Friday off so we decided to go and see if we might have a better selection to choose from. We arrived at ten o’clock and the joint was hopping. Good thing we walked over because parking was at a premium. The real early birds were already in a checkout line that stretched to the back wall of the old Club Fitness building. These folks had boxes and wheeled luggage brimming with books. Obviously the serious collectors or eBay resellers were waiting outside the building waiting to get in like Black Friday shoppers outside Best Buy hoping to get one of ten $200 laptops available. We both made a couple of rounds looking and when were ready to leave ourselves the line had shortened considerably. After checking out and spending a whopping ten bucks, we took a few more minutes to poke through the dozens of boxes of free-for-the-taking books by the door.

Donna’s big find was a stack of Golden Books a half a foot high at a quarter a piece for later mailing to nephew James. My prize purchase was two dollars spent on a jumbo book of South Carolina County Maps. I think it is around 20 years old and I’m sure there are a lot of changes around the large towns, but in the more rural parts of the state (of which there are many) it is still seems pretty accurate. As a matter of fact we already got our money back in finding a shorter route than the state map showed from Summerton to Davis Station and then Davis Station to Greeleyville.That was on Saturday, Sunday we used it to find a direct route from Turbeville to New Zion.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 63

Happy Anniversary

Horse Drawn CarriageTonight was the 15th Anniversary Dinner for the Master’s Miata Club. As usual we all got dressed up nice and went to a “fancy” restaurant. While the attendance total was right around the usual level, but percentage-wise it was probably the highest it has ever been because of the shrinkage of the membership rolls.

This year we dined at 6th & Watkins. Nice place, great food and a fun event. Some of the discussion at our table centered around the so-called Club’s Anniversary Dinner jinx in which the restaurant that has hosted our dinner has fallen on bad times not too long after we dine there. We have “killed” at least two places, one went bankrupt and changed hands and one had a big fire. We then tried to name all the places we have held an anniversary dinner and came to the conclusion that we don’t have the memory capacity we did when the club was first formed.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 53

Blast From The Past

Barndoor Fan ClubWay back in the past, 2005, I closed up shop on the Barndoor Fan Club. I thought I had found a suitable replacement web master, I even sold him the domain name, but he never did anything with it. At one time I resurrected it in a subdomain of the mr-miata.com site, but that went away when my grasp of that domain did. Someone asked me about it the other day, so I thought, what the heck, I’ll tack up the files to this place as a museum to my earlier derangement.

Barndoor Fan Club

Just don’t click on any of the email addresses, they don’t go anywhere, the Store is no longer open and it doesn’t look like it is part of the Miata Ring anymore.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 17

Took The Air Right Out Of The Sails

Augusta's Christmas Tree on the CommonsOn our way home from dinner out with friends tonight we detoured through the “valley” to see some Christmas lights. At one point going through a neighborhood Donna said, “It sounds like you picked something up in a tire.” I slowed a bit, but after a few seconds the sound went away, so I shrugged it off. About 10 minutes later as we were accelerating away from a traffic light, the back end of the car squirmed. When I shifted into second, it did it again and we could tell we had a flat. I limped ahead another 100′ or so into a small lighted parking lot.

It took a couple minutes to clean out and disassemble the trunk to get down to the spare. Jacked up the car and swapped out the flat tire for the bitty compact spare. Fortunately the regular tire and wheel fit back into the trunk, but only because there wasn’t any air in the tire and then still it was a tight squeeze. Because of the time, our only chance to get it fixed was if the tire center at Wally World was still open. It was on the way home, but although Walmart is open 24 hours, the tire center part must close their doors at 8:00 PM because it is dark when we get there.

The only good thing about this puncture is at least it is in the center of the tread area, so I can get the LTS to put a plug in the tire tomorrow. The tires are getting worn, but there is enough tread still left to possibly get me through until early spring. Just for the record I checked to see how many miles I have on these tires and it turns out I’ve got 30K on them. I wonder if the T1R is supposed to wear better than it’s predecessor the T1S? Because I was usually only able to get 25K or so on the older model Toyos…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 496

Happy 4th Anniversary

November 24, 2003

In the spirit of getting green, Donna and I have decided to downsize. We have donated our 7-1/2′ balsamus artificialus to Goodwill and have procured a 4-1/2′ antedate illuminate coniferous falsiful to grace an end table in the living room.

For the last couple of years we have been half-heartedly searching the after-Christmas sales for a deal on a new pre-lit tree with no success, so this year we just went ahead and bought a small one. As always, the Emperor was as good as a pickup truck in both carting the old tree to Goodwill and the new one home from Lowes on top of the folded top behind the seats.

Along with all the tree shopping and recaulking the bathtub, we still had time to watch 2.2 Kissy-Poo Movies™. The point two was “Alfie“, the Jude Law version, and I think that .2 might have been longer than we watched the Michael Caine version. The other two were “The Upside of Anger” & “The Banger Sisters.” I spent most of that last movie trying to figure out who the actor was that was playing frumpy writer guy, Harry Plummer. At first I thought it was the same guy who played Q on ST:TNG, but it wasn’t. Not until they rolled the credits and I saw the name Geoffrey Rush! Yikes, Captain Barbossa himself.

You don’t know what this is, do ye?… This is Aztec gold. One of 882 identical pieces they delivered in a stone chest to Cortez himself. Blood money paid to stem the slaughter he wreaked upon them with his armies. But the greed of Cortez was insatiable. So the heathen gods placed upon the gold a terrible curse. Any mortal that removes but a piece from that stone chest shall be punished for eternity.

The Incredibles is on NBC tonight. I shoulda bought it instead of Pixar’s stupid rat movie…

Lawyer: Mr. Sansweet didn’t asked to be saved. Mr. Sansweet didn’t want to be saved. And the injuries received from Mr. Incredible’s “actions,” so-called, causes him daily pain.
Bob: [lunging towards Sansweet] Hey, I saved your life!
Oliver Sansweet: You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death, that’s what you did!

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 486

Gafinkleforp

Mystery FieldIt took a while this morning, but we finally got off our duffs and made it into Hitchcock Woods around 9:30. For grins we headed all the way over to an entrance on the other side from where we usually enter, so we could walk on some different trails. One new place we passed by was called Mystery Field and there were two mysteries about it that we could see, 1) it really wasn’t a field, but more of an area covered in youngish pine trees and 2) a lot of the trees were painted with blue markings.

We stayed at our company shindig long enough to eat and the door prize drawings before sneaking out the back door. We both “won” prizes, Donna got to take home one of the two large flower arrangements and I was selected to take home one of the small table flower arrangements. Not only did we really not want the big flowers, we weren’t sure they would fit in the Miata, so we gave them away to someone who was sitting at our table.

Stopped on the way home to buy gas. There was a white Miata in the adjacent lot of a restaurant, so while the tank was filling I walked over and put an MMC calling card under their windshield wiper. After filling up we went into Krogers to do our weekly shopping. Pushing the cart out the door I paused as the woman of the couple in front of us snagged some home buyers or apartment guides out of the rack. The couple who grabbed the brochures were in front of us along with two other women shoppers heading towards our section of the parking lot. There was a white Miata parked out there near us and I speculated as to if it was the same one. We both wondered which of the pairs would get in the Miata. The male/female couple made a beeline for the Miata and Donna said to me quietly, “Don’t go say hi, I don’t want to spend 20 minutes in the parking lot chatting.” We were loading the bags in our trunk and as the woman got in the white Miata she noticed us and waved. I noticed the same 1/4 raised stuck power antenna as the one from the restaurant parking lot. I wonder if they thought the card and then seeing us was a coincidence?

Tonight’s title is a word I made up. It returned zero hits on Google. How long will it take for this post to show up in a search engine? How long before someone besides myself searches for the “word” gafinkleforp?

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 471