Year: 2011

How Low Can You Go

We went on a Georgia Geocaching run today. We needed to check on our cache in Santa Claus because of a recent DNF and while we were out, take a route to capture 4 nearby counties of Georgia’s 159 total.

Neither one of us could figure out how we had hid a cache in Toombs county (Santa Claus) without having a find there. So our first stop of the day was to change that. We found LIFE’S A GAME, HAVE FUN! in a park in the town of Lyons. Next stop was to check on the DNF’d cache. Usually one person not finding a cache is not a concern, but the folks who couldn’t find it had over 1,600 finds, so they probably should have found it. The cache was right where we put it last December. That’s the thing with geocaching, no matter how many you have found, you can still get stumped by an occasional easy one.

In some of these small rural counties pickings can be slim, so we only had a total of 11 caches on our list along the route through all 4 counties. One county only has two caches total and we really started sweating badly after we DNF’d the first one we attempted. It was all I could do to talk Donna into looking for the second one because in is #2 on our Most Hated Style Hide List, the guardrail magnetic (the lamp post skirt hide is #1.) We had kind of a rough day, 4 finds and 3 DNFs, but we made the four count, one in each of the counties we wanted.

I don’t know exactly how many miles we traveled today, because I didn’t reset an odometer, but the Google Maps loop I did last night said 268 miles. When we got in the Purple Whale this morning the nifty miles to empty meter read just over 250 miles and the gas gauge was reading one segment over half a tank. We figured we might have to buy a gallon or two of gas in Georgia so we could make it back to the Kroger in Aiken to take advantage of the $1 a gallon off we earned by buying a stove. As the day wore on it looked more and more like we might make it home without having to pay the higher price for gas in Georgia.

We figured we were home free when the miles to empty read 80 miles and the sign said Augusta 41 because Aiken is only, at most 25 miles from Augusta. When the low fuel light came on as we entered the southern part of Augusta I was unconcerned as I figured that meant we had a couple gallons left which was more than enough to make it back. At about 5 miles from Kroger, the Miles To Empty display flat-lined. The last number I remember seeing was 38 a few miles back. We were right near a gas station, briefly considered pulling in, but didn’t. Let’s summarize: the low fuel light has been one awhile, the Miles to Empty display is blank and now the last LCD segment of the gas gauge has started blinking. Visions of the car stalling at the very last light before Kroger were taking form in my mind.

Well, we did make it the Kroger, even waited for a pump to free up with the car still running. I filled the tank with 17.5 gallons of gas and it cost $38.38 or $2.19 per. We had traveled 502.5 miles on that 17.5 gallons so since the last fill up the Sonata got 28.7 MPG. While I was outside filling the tank Donna was inside trying to see exactly how much the car’s tank would hold, turns out it is 18.49 gallons. All that worry about running out of gas and I could have traveled over 28 more miles. As long as all 18-1/2 gallons are usable…

We Get Paid To Lie To A Car Salesman

We stopped in at the Mazda dealer over in Augusta this morning. Our worst fears were that the same joker who tried to show us a Miata a couple moths ago would greet us. He didn’t and we were welcomed to the lot by a pleasant enough fellow who saw my $25 test drive certificate and asked if we were just here for that or did we have any intention to buy. So we gave him the same story we did to all those other salesman back in the spring – instead of replacing the Miata with a new one that we didn’t like, we were going to buy a second car.

I told him that I wanted to drive a 6i Touring and he said they didn’t have any on the lot, all they had were the sport models (AKA the base car.) He said that they usually kept more on the lot but they were having trouble getting them because of the earthquake in Japan. The first thing I though was, “Are all car salesman pathological liars?”, the 6 is assembled in Flat Rock, MI. (David, I apologize if they can’t make them because supply shortages from Japan.) He had a key for a 6i Sport in Kona Blue in his pocket, which would have been our color choice. He started it up, cranked the A/C and then showed us the trunk and the exterior of the car while the interior cooled.

We went for a drive. Instantly I liked the way it drove, the road feel of the base model was leaps and bounds better than the base Sonata, more on par with the Optima and our Sonata SE. The 176 horsepower felt as quick as the 200 of the Sonata. The car was quiet, roomy and very comfortable, for me. Donna didn’t like the way the seats hit her in the back and couldn’t get settled. The sales guy chimed in that the Touring seats were different, still cloth, but they might be more comfortable. We had the perfect out of any sales pressure because we were interested in a model they didn’t have, so he filled out the form for us, gave us a brochure, his card and took down my work phone number so he could give us a call when they got a Touring model.

The day after I was disappointed in the base Sonata we visited the Mazda dealer. Had the Miata test drive gone smoothly I think we might have tried driving a 6. They might have had a Touring model in Kona Blue. If those things happened differently back on our first try at this dealer back in March we might have ended up owning one of these. But I have zero regrets on missing out on the Mazda.

And we really didn’t lie to the fellow, everything we said was simply misplaced in time, and when we said we were going to buy a second car, we were using the word were in its simple past indicative form.

Four to six weeks later we’ll get a $25 gift card in the mail. It’ll make a nice down payment on a Carstashe for the Sonata.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1041

Can’t Believe It Has Been 11 Days

Since we last had a working stove. Well, it took us a week to finally order a new one and then there was an aborted delivery attempt, so I guess I really can.

We ordered an oven temperature sensor from the local parts house, but when I picked it up, the conversation with the guy behind the counter (who has been in the business a long time) said he’d sell it to me, but told me I was wasting my money as he had never seen one that ohm’d out good be the problem. He said that it probably was going to be the clock board, AKA brain, and if I had one version of my model of the stove I could get a new board for $305 and if I had the other version, well, they didn’t make that part anymore.

We thought about buying a new stove from the new appliance part of their business, but never did get around there to do it. We ended up at the Home Depot around the corner from our house for 2 reasons. 1) It is just around the corner from us and 2) if we went to Kroger (right next door to the Home Depot that is right around the corner from us) we could buy a $500 gift card and get double points to use to knock a buck off a gallon of gas at the Kroger filling station (that is just around the corner from the Kroger store that is right next door to the Home Depot that is right around the corner from us.) By some fluke they were offering quadruple points, so now we have two separate fill-ups where we will get a buck off a gallon of the price of gas.

We were supposed to have it delivered on Wednesday, but when they called they said that delivery would occur between 1:30 and 5:30, so I called to re-schedule because we had a haircut appointment right after work and we couldn’t take a chance on missing it. The time frame could not be adjusted, but I could change the day. The next available delivery was Friday (today) between 5 and 9 PM.

Funny thing happened on that Wednesday after work. We showed up at the hairdresser’s place and the door was locked, the lights were out and there were 2nd and final delivery notices from FedEx stuck to the door. Huh? When we got back in the car to drive home Donna checked her calendar and discovered that we weren’t supposed to be there until the next day, Thursday. Then it came back to us, Sheri had asked us to change the day at our last appointment back in May because she was going to be on vacation. Crap, could have had the stove yesterday.

Inaugural meal prepared on our new range – pizza.

Maybe Not Worth The $25

I received a card in the mail yesterday from Mazda touting 0% APR financing for 60 months plus up to $1000 APR Cash and Owner Loyalty Cash. To zero interest is on any Mazda, but the cash is only applicable to certain models. It is about 2 months too late for any of that nonsense.

There was also an offer for a $25 gift card for test driving any Mazda. It came from the dealer in Columbia which is 65 miles away, so a round trip divided by the 27 MPG of the Miata (can’t expect me to drive a brand new Hyundai onto the lot) times $3.50 a gallon of gas comes to $17. We can go to any dealer, so we could drive to the Augusta store which is only 39 miles away that way we are spending less than half of the card value on gas, but we were entirely displeased with the test drive process the last time (and that was when we were actually buying a car.)

We are probably headed over Augusta way this Saturday anyway, so if the process turns out to be as painless as it was at the Kia dealer we just might take a Mazda 6 for a spin. After building one online and optioning it out as close to the Sonata SE we now own, the list price of a Mazda 6i Touring was right in the ballpark price-wise and the dealer’s online inventory shows they have one in stock.

Sure hope I don’t like it.

Netflix Recommends

I have never been happy with the recommendations that Netflix suggest for me. I know I’m partly to blame because my tastes in movies is very eclectic so pinning down my taste is difficult. They still are not too accurate even after they have split up the recommendations by genre. This last set of recommendations struck me as so far off base that it was comical.

On occasion I will sit on one end of the couch and Watch Instantly while Donna sits on the other end and watches TV. This past weekend as I perused the available titles I noticed one that stirred something in the deep recesses of my pea-sized male brain – Naked Ambition. It is a documentary about a photographer that wants to shoot a coffee table book about the porn industry. He travels to the AVN Awards (Porn’s version of the Academy Awards) and photographs actors, producers, fans and sex toy makers. The name of the book is “An R-Rated Look at an X-Rated Industry” and the movie, like the book, feature nudity, but no actual pornography and turned out to be quite interesting.

When I was done watching I rated the movie 3 Stars meaning I liked it and this is what the screen flipped to:

Thomas the Tank Engine? Blues Clues? To the left of them it is asking how often I watched Steamy and/or Social & Cultural Docs. Is that what they consider Thomas the Tank Engine, Steamy? Blues Clues is a Social Documentary?

Perfect Tweet

I had an idea for a blog post and if I was in the mood I know I could have stretched it into a couple hundred words, but I wasn’t, so I turned into a tweet for the MMC.

I have come to the conclusion, from swapping between the Sonata & Miata, that the Miata’s steering wheel is too big for the size of the car.

Exactly 140 characters.

Gobble Gobble

The other day I posted my favorite picture I took at Saturday’s MMC event, but here is my favorite one taken by someone else: The Turkeys of Edgefield


(left to right) John, Stacey, Denny, Tom, Me & Rudy.
Thanks Patti!