Month: September 2012

Food Lion Auto Fair

Donna and I led a rally for the MMC to the Food Lion Auto Fair at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord. There was one car in the caravan, ours. A couple other guys from the Club did drive up separately in a pickup truck in case they bought something big.

If it is car related, no matter how tangentially, it is for sale at the hundreds, maybe thousands of vendors. It is also the place to buy a car as there are thousands available from a couple hundred dollar project car to a $40k ready to roll hot rod to who knows how much on a collector car being auctioned off.

We killed a couple hours at the track, eat more Cajun food than we needed for lunch, wasted a hour or so in a giant mall before driving home empty handed.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1172

Gary Johnson For President

Eight years ago I blogged that I was going to vote for Wes?ley K. Clark for President. Admittedly, it was sort of tongue-in-cheek, as the only real reason I had was that Mr. Clark drove a Miata. And I never actually got to vote for him as he didn’t win the Democratic nomination. But now…

…for the second time, Mr. Miata is throwing the weight of his political might behind a candidate for the highest* office in the land, the Libertarian Party’s* Gary Johnson. This time it is different, as Mr. Johnson will be on the ballot and based on my dissatisfaction of our current two party system with their antagonistic, my way or no way, treating of each other I will probably punch Gary Johnson’s ticket.

*If you read this online The Atlantic article you’ll see that I mean these two words literally and is the icing on cake of a Gary Johnson Presidency.

Flipper

A couple friends went shrimping near Hilton Head on Saturday. As they made their way towards the spot where they planned on fishing, a dolphin showed up alongside the boat and followed them. When they stopped and took out a fish to bait the net, the dolphin stood on its tail begging, so they tossed it a fish. Pretty soon it was eating out of their hands.

After a while another boat showed up so they stopped feeding the dolphin (it’s illegal.) Once they stopped feeding it, it swam over to the other boat. Promptly the folks in the other boat started feeding it too. This dolphin had either escaped from Seaworld or found out on its own that begging from fisherman is easier than chasing fish.

When our friends decided to go back to shrimping they realized they had to go back and get more bait. They had feed all theirs to the dolphin.

SPCA

The other day on our trip home from work, we were cruising along just fine about a half a mile from home when all of a sudden the car in front of us beeps their horn and slams on the brakes. We were far enough back that we were in no trouble of hitting them, so I touched the brakes to slow and waited to see what happened next.

Leading up to the sudden deceleration neither one of us saw any reason for it, no joggers, cyclists, dogs were in any where to be seen and we were still 30 yards from the next stop sign. It was then that the squirrel ducked out from the front of the car and finished crossing the street.

The driver must have been a member of the Squirrel’s Preventative Cruelty Association or SPCA.

Ahhh…So

Stopped for some oriental food on the way home from work today. We can personally vouch for the deliciousness of the Tangerine Beef at the Red Bowl in Aiken. And if it is possible, the seared pot stickers appetizer outshone the entree.

The fortune in my cookie read: You will make many changes before settling satisfactorily.

Hoping to score some brownie points I said, “Well, this must be a past cookie as I have made all the changes I’m going to make.” Donna, without missing a beat says, “Its talking about your Fantasy Football team, dummy, you need to make some changes.”

Buoy Oh Buoy

Boy-o-boy. At one point the score was 102-22 and right now it is not too much better at 112-56. With the 6 of my players that have finished I have 55 points, with just two of my opponents players, Michael Vick and C.J. Spiller, he has 51 points. Add in any one of the other 5 players that have finished and I’d be trailing by a minimum of a touchdown. The predicted final score after tomorrow night’s game is 140-80. If I do end up with 80 I’ll consider myself lucky. The only reason I’ll be able to sleep at all tonight is that the score of another game stands at 116-54.

For my birthday I ordered a custom printed football jersey with my name on the back and everything. It is already in production, so it is too late to cancel it, but if the Purple Whales keep playing like this, I’ll have to think up a different Christmas gift…

Auto Matters

Last Sunday when we returned from our northeast trip, I parked the Purple Whale. Monday night I washed all the gunk off of it, that had accumulated in the 2,772.7 miles we drove it. Today was the first time we got back in it since then. The weather has been positively autumnal here, so we drove the Miata to work and home with the top down all week.

With nearly all of those trip miles on the highway, our average mileage for the trip was 32.6 MPG. We bought gas before we left and then again when we got back. On the trip we filled up 5 times and averaged $3.81 per gallon. Of those seven fill ups the cheapest was $3.21 here in Aiken and the most expensive was $4.10 in New York.