Road Trip

POS Racing Fan Club

POSAfter breakfast in the condo Donna and I drove over to Roebling Road Raceway outside of Savannah, GA to see a couple of friends race in an SCCA Solo1 event.

John is a heck of a driver that I hate following through the twisty roads on MMC events, because I know if I try and keep up with him I’ll end up getting in trouble. On the road he drives with what seems like abandon, but he always keeps in on the pavement. On the track he is a terror and usually once an event he manages to find the dirt, but he still has wrapped up first place in the southeast region in the CSP class. The car he drives, and consequently the race team, was christened by his wife the day he brought the well used red early model Miata home from the dealer, POS (and I’m betting you can figure what those three initials stand for.) After these last few years POS now has an alternate nickname, the Money Pit. Hey, it keeps John off the streets, literally.

Today when we got to the track John made me an honorary pit crew member by giving me a ball cap embroidered with the words POS Racing and a small red Miata complete with his car number in the white meatball on the door. I’m not sure if you get to pick your own number, but John’s is 54 and I wonder if it has anything to do with his propensity to leave the track and Officers Toody & Muldoon.

When we got back from watching racing this afternoon I changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor. At 48,840 the car was about at the halfway point between Mazda’s recommended service points of 45,000 and 52,500.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 446

48,000 Leaves

OverlookThat is the average leaf count on a mature maple tree* and coincidentally, the mileage the Emperor passed on the way to to meet the participants of the MMC Leaf Peeping Expedition. Over 400 miles and 11 hours later we are home and just a little tuckered out.

We had pretty much the average turn out for our club on an event recently, 3 cars. I threatened to cancel if at least 4 cars didn’t show up, but that was an empty boast as my navigator told me that even if we were the only car we we going on the run. The six of us devoured enough breakfast at the Cracker Barrel to sustain us for a week in the Amazon before setting out in search of chlorophyll challenged leaves. The first 11 miles were Interstate, but after we got to two-lane blacktop 2/3 of the tops folded down. The sun was just beginning to peek over the tree tops and the temps were in the low 60’s so the windows and wind blockers were still up.

After our first pit stop and because one couple had yet to experience them, we made a stop at the Georgia Guidestones, AKA the American Stonehenge. The journey then continued up the eastern edge of Georgia. A quick dip into SC before ending up at Black Mountain State Park back in north Georgia. Two years ago when we did this trip with the Club we were about two weeks late and the vistas were of a uniform brown. This time we hit at just about peak and the mountains were very colorful.

Lunch was at the renown Dillard House just up the road from the state park. The six of us devoured enough food at lunch to sustain us on a circumnavigation of the globe. After eating we took a winding road to Highlands, NC where we lost one car to shopping in the downtown. Donna and I, along with, the appropriately named Autumn and Dave, gassed up and headed down the mountain and back into SC.

Highway 28 from Highlands back to the flatlands is a great Miata road full of twists and turns and all manner of decreasing radius bends. I won’t mention any names, but one of this crew really regretted the amount of food they consumed at lunch. About halfway through the good stuff we came up on a Mazda Tribute (the mini-SUV) who obliviously didn’t get zoom-zoom memo. He was going around the turns so slow we could have passed him on a skateboard. With no place to really pass and with two cars to boot we played whip with him for about 20 miles, alternately slowing way down letting him get a “big” head start and then charging back at a more appropriate Miata speed.

Awesome trip, but a long day, so I’m glad we only do it once a year.

* Oh yeah, I made that leaf count statistic up so it would fit the car’s mileage.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 436

Best Laid Plans

On our drive up to the upstate the fall colors ranged from none, to some, back to none, into really great to just a touch. My plan to take a picture of the car with a vivid fall backdrop was forgotten because the only time the leaves were what I might be looking for was in the middle of the drive up into the mountains at the NC border and I was busy driving like a mad man to even think about stopping for a photo op. This is usually how it works on our trips to the mountains, the really good scenery is reduced to a blur and not captured photographically as it unfortunately falls during the best sports car driving segments.

Tomorrow morning it is supposed to be raining, so depending on how long it looks like it will continue, we may forgo further leaf peeping and just head for home. Either way there will probably be no picture taking tomorrow either.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 429

RAT TOES!

Thanks to the cloudy day we managed to keep the top down the whole way from Aiken to Chesterfield. We had a nice visit with Donna’s aunt, cousin and spouse of cousin. The cousins had just this year retired from the New Jersey, actually eastern PA, rat race and moved to South Carolina. After getting a tour of the new house we settled in for some reminiscing. We thought for lunch we could all go into downtown Chesterfield and find a nice local restaurant to eat at. But apparently dining options are limited in the town of 1,338, so lunch was had at the local Subway.

After lunch we said goodbye and instead of turning left and heading home we went right and headed north to Concord, NC. That’s right, Razzoo’s for dinner. The wait for a table was 15 minutes, but definitely worth it, although after we were seated we couldn’t figure out why the wait because there were still plenty of empty tables and it looked like there was plenty of wait staff. Speaking of servers, my buddy Mark asked me to pat ours on the butt because everyone of the females that ever waited on us were very young and attractive. I think Mark thought I would get in trouble with my wife if I did, well the joke is on him. It didn’t bother Donna at all, but Spence was a little weirded out by it.

I had Rat Toes for appetizer (I saved you 3 Mark) and Donna got the Crawdaddy Fondue Dip. For dinner we split a Li’l Side Salad and the Cajun Combo Skillet. We were so full we skipped desert…for about 60 minutes. After we got back to the hotel we walked across the street to a Sonic for a Sundae and a Blast.

In an effort to burn off a portion, a very small portion, of the calories consumed at Razzoo’s we risked life and limb walking across the huge parking lot from the restaurant to the Concord Mills Mall. We then risked our charge card balance by walking all the way around the 1.4 million square foot shopping mall. We actually showed some restraint there, I bought the movie Grand Prix on DVD at FYE and Donna bought a couple of bracelets at a kiosk called Be Unique.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 279

“Small” Car

Somehow the other day I got in a discussion about the Dodge Caliber with my current cubicalmate and summer hire. He told me it was a small car. I told him he was nuts, I had seen one in a motel parking lot on Donna and my last road trip. It was parked right next to a last generation Mustang and the Caliber seemed to dwarf the ‘Stang. From my vantage point, a second story balcony, it looked taller, wider and longer. I countered with, “The Neon, the car the Caliber is replacing was a small car.” Adam countered with, “The Caliber is smaller than the Neon.” The gauntlet was thrown down. Off to the internet for some research.

The following are from Automotive.com:
2005 Dodge Neon
– Overall length (inches): 174.4, overall width (inches): 67.4, overall height (inches): 56, wheelbase (inches): 105, cargo volume (cu. ft.): 13.1 trunk, curb weight (lbs) 2,582.
2007 Dodge Caliber
– Overall length (inches): 173.8, overall width (inches): 68.8, overall height (inches): 60.4, wheelbase (inches): 103.7, cargo volume (cu. ft.): 18.5 w/seats up, curb weight (lbs) 2,996
2004 Ford Mustang
– Overall length (inches): 183.2, overall width (inches): 73.1, overall height (inches): 53.2, wheelbase (inches): 101.3, curb weight (lbs) 3,254

Boy do I feel like a fool, somewhat. The Caliber’s length and wheelbase is shorter than the Neon, but it is 1-1/2″ wider and nearly 4″ taller with 5 more cubic feet of storage (35 if you fold the back seats down.) The only thing bigger about the Caliber over the Mustang is height. Must have been parallax error or maybe too many refreshment from the mini-bar.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 273

828 Miles Later…

828 Miles Later?…we are home again. Maybe 275 of that was today (I didn’t keep track) on the way home. Half the trip back was mountainous twisty and only about 1/3 of that was spent at “speed.” It is during the 4th of July week and high tourist season in the mountains. Most of the time I was stuck behind a car from Florida or an old man in a hat driving a Camry. Secretly there were times when Donna was happy to have a slow poke in front of me for some of the trip, by mid-morning she had had just about enough of being tossed around, bless her heart.

The Blue Boar Inn is a mile and a half into the woods on a dirt road and after about 8 trips on that surface, the car was ugly dirty, so I washed it this evening. Much better.

One last story from the trip. On Friday when we went out to see the Milky Way, but were thwarted by the bright moon, we did get a substitute show. Right across the Skyway from the overlook we stopped at was a big old hill full of trees that spread from left to right traversing our whole view. The hill side was alive with fireflies. It reminded me of people flicking their lighters at an outdoor stadium rock show. We sat on a little wall and watched for about 10 minutes oohing and aahing, until some animal snorted in the woods behind us. Being city folks this noise made us get up quickly, dust off our butts, walk to the car and head back to the Inn.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up to wash, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 250

Robbinsville Part II

We did go up on the Cheohala Skyway last night, but the Milky Way was a no show. It wasn’t cloud cover it was the moon. Amazing the amount of light generated by the 1st Quarter Moon when there is no other ambient light present.

And we did do an out and back Gap run before breakfast. Donna normally loves riding through the twisties as much as I love driving them, but the chemo has made her a little more sensitive to jostling around. I ran through the 318 turns at about 3/4 speed and it went good as we had an uninterrupted run. On the way back I dialed the speed up a little bit and she was a real trooper about it. We got about 9 miles of free running before I caught the tail end of a 3 cruiser motorcycle group. When we finished she told me that that was quite enough Gapping for awhile. We made it back in near perfect time for breakfast.

As always the food was fantastic, but way more than we normally eat. So instead of going for a hike after breakfast we returned to our room and laid on the bed like lizards in the sun digesting. At 11AM we finally got in the Miata for a trip all the way across the Cherohala Skyway to reconnoiter lunch or dinner spots for a future MMC visit. Whenever we have gone over there in the past we have always eaten at the same ol’ place and while the food is good it is kind of pricey. Guess what? other than that place the picking are extremely thin. A Subway, a Hardee’s (where we ended up and were sorry we did), a pizza place and a little family restaurant. The most interesting thing about Telico Plains was that the natives spoke an entirely unintelligible form of English. The accent was 1/2 mountain south and 1/2 mumble. One women in the Hardee’s parking lot spoke to us and we had to say what twice in an effort to understand her and we finally just shrugged our shoulders and moved on. The nicest part about Telico Plains was leaving it.

For our evening meal we ended up in Robbinsville at a BBQ we had eaten at before. Last couple of times we had been in there we wondered how they stayed in business as the customers were nearly non-existent. This night the joint was jumping, it was jammed with motorcyclists and we had to finally wave over a waitress and demand she take our order. After dinner I wanted to go to the start of the Gap once again to get a sticker for the trunk lid to replace the one that used to be on the old trunk. Strangely enough the Crossroads of Time was closed this morning at 6:30 when we went by. When I hung a left out of the BBQ place Donna asked why. She thought we we going the long way, over the Stecoah Gap and up NC28. I said I didn’t think you wanted any more really windy roads, but she said 28 is so pretty a drive and even though it is very twisty, the curves are not as densely packed as the Gap itself. So we went that way turning a 12 mile return trip into 60 miles…cool.

Tomorrow we are going for today’s scheduled hike before the huge and delicious breakfast so we won’t have any excuse not to go for a walk in the woods.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, down once more, and back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 245