Motoring Challenge

Aborted Assault on Atlanta

or A Key Failure

We have Atlantaphobia and really don’t like going to there. It is too dang big with too many people and the traffic is awful. If it wasn’t for the airport offering the best prices on direct flights to Seattle we would would probably never go there. There is only one other possible reason that might make us go there – Moss Motoring Challenge points.

For 2017 we need a Haberdashery. One with a sign. And there is one in the Buckhead section of the Big Peach. There were a couple of other possible points selected for the way over and or back too. Plans were made to drive over Sunday the 28th of May. We hoped that this would lessen the traffic madness levels considerably because 1) it was going to be real early on Sunday morning and 2) it was in the middle of the Memorial Day weekend and a lot of people would be off somewhere else.

By 6:00 AM were were on our way west on I-20. I drove the first leg, but we stopped at the Rest Stop at mile marker 182 to swap drivers. Donna got in the drivers seat and when she started up the CTBNL it almost immediately stumbled and died. She tried to start it again and it would turn over but never start. I asked, “Are you sure you have the clutch all the way in?” “Yesss,” she replied derisively. I asked because 1) she is a lot shorter than me and occasionally in the past she hasn’t moved the seat forward enough so that she could get the pedal depressed far enough and 2) since she retired she hasn’t driven the Miata once (and it is not like she drove it much before.)

I said, “Let me try.” We swapped sides. I slid the seat all the way back, twisted the key and no start. Well crap. Got plenty of gas. Do we call a tow truck? I try one more time. The car still doesn’t start, but this time I notice a brief red flash in the dash. A clue! The light is shaped like a key. Synapses fire in my brain – immobilizer. I took out her key and put mine in, turned it…the car started right up.

I wanted to test my theory, but hesitated. Both keys are the same age, if hers failed, what makes it so sure my key wasn’t far behind. Not wanting to be stranded in a rest area on a Sunday morning, or worse, downtown Atlanta, we opted to turn around and head home before shutting off the car. Because it was a nice morning we took the long way home and it turned out that the aborted trip was more of a Motoring Challenge point success anyway. Haberdashery was worth a whopping one point, but we managed to score 2 points for a Lumber Mill and 28 points for Scrabble Challenge section when Donna spotted a street sign for Jacqueline Dr. while zipping merrily along GA 150, north of Appling, between the thriving metropolises of Winfield and Phinizy.

Yooge Pothole

We have been nibbling around the edges at this year’s Moss Motoring and this is the latest example. The other day on our way somewhere we cut through the almost entirely empty Aiken Mall parking lot to avoid dealing with the Whiskey Road traffic and noticed a big old hole in the ground. We both went, “Oooh, we need a ‘huge pothole’ for the Challenge.” I didn’t want to get a picture then because we were on our way to that somewhere. We did make a mental note of it and scheduled a near future evening drive at dusk to get it. That future happened Monday.

I was thinking about maybe trying to photoshop some fish in the water, but gave up after it turned out to be more work than it would have been worth.

53,000 ng/dL of Testosterone

Better late than never. This post was supposed to written last weekend, but somehow I got on the write-about-bicycle kick and forgot it my drafts folder. Not that you are missing much as all it was was a CTBNL mileage update.

Last Saturday we drove up to Kershaw, SC to meet up with some other MMC members at the Carolina Motorsports Park. Club member John Haff is big in the NASA racing thing and he arranged for us fellow Miata owners to take some “parade” laps of the track during the lunch break. We of course turned that into a Motoring Challenge themed event as we needed a photo of a parade…

Somewhere, quite literally in the boondocks, the odometer clicked1 passed the 53,000 mark. I say literally, because we had just passed an intersection with a small country store on one corner that had “Boon Docks Store” painted on its outside wall.

52,000 Condo Dwellers

After lunch at Big Meats at the Mcleod Farms Roadside Stand & Pumpkin Patch Farm Museum Complex Donna and I left the members of the MMC behind to head down to Hilton Head Island for a couple of days. It was sort of a working vacation as we had to, along with kicking back on the beach, take some interior photos of condos to update the Hilton Head Condo Rentals web page.

Along with all the photo taking and beach walking we still found time to drive around and score a few points in the Moss Motoring Challenge. Because Hilton Head is sort of a playground for the well heeled it cost us money to take the photos. Donna found a street in the Sea Pines Resort that was worth over 30 points in the Scrabble Scramble, but if you want to drive onto the plantation, and you are not a guest or owner, it cost $6 to get a visitor pass. While six dollars sounds like a lot, because Mizzenmast is worth 32 points, it works out to less than 19¢ a point. Compare that with our other Hilton Head Island shot and it was a bargain. We needed a photo of a toll booth and the Cross Island Parkway was right there. The toll was a buck and a quarter and the picture is worth 1 point. The last photo we took was off the island on the way home and it was free.

On the way over to have dinner with Donna the Condo Queen on Sunday night the CTBNL passed by the 52,000 mile mark.

You Can’t Get There From Here

We took a little trip up to North Carolina this weekend. The purpose of the drive was two fold, a few Motoring Challenge points and my sister’s 60th birthday.

Saturday’s goal was driving up to the top of the highest point east of the Rockies, Mount Mitchell. This was going to get us 1 point each for a sign with 8% (or greater) grade on it, famous road for the Blue Ridge Parkway and Mount Mitchell being one of Nature’s Giants. After an unimpeded spirited run up North Carolina 80 to the Parkway, we were surprised to see we couldn’t head south to Mt. Mitchell. The Road Closed gates were padlocked shut, leaving us no other option but to drive back down the windy road.

Turns out the last weeks’s winter precipitation still covered some of the parkway, never mind on the higher elevation of the mountain. This was a very minor setback as we had already snagged a few points for some other destinations, oddities and a random 1964-1/2 Ford Mustang parked in front of bar. The road block turns out to have been a bonus in a way as it means we have to take another run at conquering Mount Mitchel and having to drive the twisty roads on the North Carolina mountains.

Sunday was set aside for bringing bagels for breakfast to the birthday girl. We stopped in at Joey’s NY Bagels as it is right on the way to her house. We bought 4 poppy seed bagels, Diane and her husband Allan’s favorite and 4 plain for Donna and I. One each for the four of us and one each for later. After a couple hours of chatting around the kitchen table it was time for Donna and I to drive back home to prepare for the next week of exciting valve building.

I’ve got a couple other little stories of the trip that I’ll try and write about tomorrow and Thursday. Here is a sneak peek of them – 1) Waffle House & 2) Gate House. Until then, marvel in the weirdness that is two grown adults having their picture taken with a car and an object or scene holding up what is essentially and advertisement for a car parts business:

117 Years of Transportation

One of the categories in this years Moss Motoring Challenge if to find a car from each decade since 1900 to 2010s. The cars from the 70s to present are worth a point, but then the point value starts going up by 1 each decade going backwards to reach 7 points for a car from 1910-1919. Then it jumps a bit so that an automobile from the first decade of the twentieth century is worth 10 points.

The first photo we took in this category was worth 5 points when a coworker randomly showed up at work with her 1935 hot rod a couple of weeks ago.

Today, Donna and I went to Outback for lunch and then to Target for a little discretionary spending. As we exited the Restaurant I noticed a stanced Smurf Blue NA Miata go by on the street. I’ve familiar with that car because it used to belong to the boyfriend of our next door neighbor’s daughter. That kid sold it when he went off to college so it hasn’t been around for a while.

As we drove into the Target lot in our NB Miata I saw a gray retractable hard top NC car leaving. It was then Donna saw that same modded little blue NA and asked, “What year is that?” “90 or 91,” I said. She said, “Let’s go take a picture of it.” About that time we saw a white ND Miata drive right by the front of Target. We had now seen all four generations of the Miata in the same parking lot in a two minute span.

We looped back and took a photo of the customized NA (obviously because of the photo above) and chat with the kid who owned it, told him that we just wanted a picture of his car along side ours for a photo scavenger hunt we were doing. I had the Challenge poster in my hand and as I was showing it to him he reached for it, so I handed it to him. Seeing as he had a hold of it, I asked if he wouldn’t mind posing with it and he was game (or just to stunned that this old couple wanted a photo of his car), so I took a couple pictures, one from the front and another from the back.

How Was Your Saturday?