Year: 2017

Miles and Miles and Miles

Yesterday’s anniversary got me thinking about just how many miles we’ve been in a Miata.

The original 1990 “Smurf” blue car racked up 108 thousand miles in five years before we traded it in for a new 1995 Miata. The 1995 traveled 128 thousand miles in 8 years of ownership before being traded in on a new 2003 Miata. That car stayed in the family for 13 years traveling 165,000 miles. We’ve owned the current 2002 Miata for a little more than a year and have driven it 11,000 miles. All those numbers total up to 412,000 miles of Miata fun in 28 years. Wow.

Four hundred twelve thousand divided by 28 equals almost 15,000 miles a year and at that rate we’ll reach a half a million Miata miles in the year 2023. But on further examination the trend line for Miles Per Year (MPY)is falling off. The first 5 years the average was over 21,600 MPY, the second 8 years was 16,000 MPY, the third 13 years worked out to be 12.7k MPY and for this car it is down to a under 9,000 MPY, so it might not be until 2027 we get to 500,000 miles.

Maybe I’ll start taking the long way home…

Happy Miataversary

Twenty-eight years ago today on a cool November evening Donna & I drove over to Augusta after work in our 1981 Honda Prelude (which looked remarkably like this.) Donna drove the Prelude home alone. I drove home in our brand spanking new 1990 Mazda Miata (which looked remarkably like this.)

Ever since that day we have always had a Miata in the garage.

Tonight as we traditionally do every year on this holiday, we’ll gather the family and our pets around a crackling fire in living room and read aloud the story of how Brian Buys A Miata.

Wash Day

We have a friend who can make vinyl stickers, so I had her work up a small angry ladybug for the back of the big Angry Ladybug.

Yesterday both cars got bathes. The Miata needed one to wash off the mud and grass from parking along the side of South Carolina roads on a rainy day and the rest of the weekend’s road grime. The Mini was not nearly as filthy as the Miata, but a recent rain had left easly noticable spots all over the gloss black flat roof.

The Miatas have never gone through an automatic car wash because, not only the convertible thing, but it is small enough that by the time I realize this is a chore it is over. The Sonata on the other hand was just big enough to be annoying, so more often than not we spent the $10 to take it to Lulu’s. The good thing about downsizing from the Sonata to the Mini is now I wash both cars in the driveway in about the same amount of time it took to hand wash the Purple Whale.

Chasing Rainbows

On Saturday Donna and I led the Masters Miata Club on the drive to the North Carolina mountains to see some fall color and drive on a few windy roads. On the way home at our last pit stop in McCormick, SC we put the top up because it looked like rain ahead. The top was down when we left home 11 hours and 400 miles ago and truth be told, we were glad of the excuse because it was about time to take a break from the sun, the wind and the noise.

About 10 miles south of McCormick, as we passed through Plum Branch, I looked left at the dark clouds, thanking ourselves on our decision to raise the roof, when I noticed a small segment of barely visible rainbow. Oooh, we need a rainbow for the Moss Motoring Challenge. I conferred with my navigator, and Donna said, “Turn around.” So, I did a U-turn across the 5 lanes of US221 and turned right on SC283. After a bit, we came to a side road, turned down it and stopped. The rainbow segment was still there. I hopped out and took a picture. When we reviewed it inside the car it was fairly disappointing looking. It was recognizable as a bit of rainbow and would probably count, but both of us were unsatisfied.

Because the sun was going down in the west and 283 traveled east and the rain was ahead in the east, we agreed to keep going in that direction hoping for a better rainbow. A 1/2 mile further along down the road it was still wet from the rain having just been there and another 1/2 mile further it started to rain lightly. The two-lane road was surrounded by tall pine trees, but after a slight shift in road direction the sun popped out behind us and the rainbow appeared in front of us seemingly starting right in the middle of the road. I slowed down to pull over and had to pick a spot carefully because there was very little shoulder. By the time I got stopped and jumped out of the car into the light rain, the sun mostly disappeared and the rainbow, while still visible, had faded considerably. I took several vertically orientated pictures to capture the car, road, trees and about a third of the rainbow’s arc. The in-car review of my efforts had us agreeing that this was much better than the first attempt, but still left a little to be desired.

In for a penny, in for a pound, so we thought even though it was a bit out of the way, we’d drive the whole 20 miles east to Edgefield before turning south to Aiken to see if another rainbow opportunity showed up. Because of the recent downpour, the grass was very wet and the ground a little soggy, so as I pulled back onto the road, the back tire started to spin. I eased off the gas and returned to the road somewhat gracefully, but vowed that next time we pulled over to take a rainbow.

Well, not 3 miles further down the road, everything came together, the sun came out, the rainbow brightened and an empty Baptist church parking lot appeared on the right.

HDTV not HGTV

About a month ago I wrote about my cable company trying to cheat me out of $2.99 a month for a stupid digital adapter box that I didn’t need. I managed to get them to stop charging me the money because one or two adapters were supposed to be free.

I also hoped that in the end I wouldn’t need it. You know what they say about hope? “Hope in one hand & bleep in the other.” By the end of the month all the HD versions of the regular channels disappeared and if you wanted to watch the lo-def versions you needed the adapter. This is no good. Once your eyes have feasted on tasty 16:9 crystal clear images, you just can’t go back to a 4:3 fuzzy-wuzzy picture.

Not wanting to give AtlanticBB the satisfaction I hoped maybe a newer amplified Mohu Leaf would pull in all the local channels unlike the regular Leaf we tried 5 years ago. This way we would keep the high-speed internet and drop the TV portion of the bill. Well you know what they say about hope? Unlike 5 years ago with the non-amplified Leaf, this time we got the local Fox affiliate great, but NBC was nowhere to be found. To top it off ABC worked well only most of the time.

Giving up, I called Atlantic Broadband and asked what do I have to do to get local channels in high definition. Right now we are paying $132 for the Limited TV package and the 125Mb internet, but if I wanted to drop the internet down to 100Mb we could get the “Essentials Package” which would be the Limited TV in HD and they’ll toss in HBO and EPIX for $95…for the first 2 years, then it goes up $5 bucks a month until it gets back to $130ish…at which time we will no doubt have to call and beg for a lower rate for a different package.

Our appointment was scheduled for 2:30 to 5:30pm yesterday and I certainly hoped whoever showed up to do the work would be better than the last time these chuckle-heads had to come into our house. This time, like a Vegas slot machine paying out a few coins, hope won.

Al was pleasant, competent, and went above and beyond. The only possible bad thing I could say about our hour and forty-five minutes together is he reeked of cigarette smoke when you got near him. Because our signal strength was only marginally acceptable he went outside and climbed the pole across the street. From up there he removed a couple of old filters (that are no longer used anyway.) He also ran a ground wire from the new splitter he put on the house to the ground on the electric meter instead of the ground stake (which is not to code) that Mutt and Jeff didn’t fix 4-1/2 years ago. He then made up a couple of new RG-6 coax lines to replace my interior runs, just because.

We have the same channels as we did before, only now in glorious HD. We now also have 5 channels of HBO and 4 of Epix which we will probably hardly ever watch, but I left them in lineup of channels that we will scan through while surfing using the remote, so who knows.

Somewhere along the line when I was telling Donna what we were getting HDTV, either I mis-spoke or she mis-heard, so she was disappointed when I told her we don’t get HGTV even though everytime we are in a hotel room in which that channel is available, she will invariably remark, “I’ve already seen this one.”

Fox, Ed Fox

After last year’s living embodiment of the company’s safety mascot for the ASCO Halloween Costume Contest, I decided to return to a Wintercroft paper mask. Previously I’ve been a large skull head and a pumpkin head, but this time I wanted to make one of his animal masks. I chose the fox because that is ASCO’s Director of Operations actual last name.

Ed is a pretty chill guy, but sometimes you never know how someone might take something and there was a tiny part of me that was worried he was thinking I was making fun of him, but he was fine with it, actually told me it was the best costume ever.

Because I bike road into work today there would have been no way to carry the mask in this morning, so I brought it in yesterday in one of those large reusable grocery bags. A few years ago they added an extra step in the front entrance security process. Now the guard has to look inside your lunch box (or any bag other you are carrying) to look for weapons. When I got to the door on Monday I unzipped the lunch box and said, “Here’s my lunch.” Then I spread the handles of the grocery bag and said, “Severed animal head.”

The guard took a beat…and…then…he smiled.

Afternoon Update:
They take a photo of everyone in costume in the cafeteria in the morning and then when that’s done, the costumed parade through the plant, zig-zagging around the aisles in all the department and office areas so the non-participants can see everyone who has dressed up. Even though I put my company name badge mid chest and had changed it to read Edd Foxx, I had a few people afterwards asked me who I was supposed to be. One wondered if I was supposed to be the Carfax fox and another wondered if I was Star Fox from the old Nintendo video game. You have to admit, the mask would have worked for either one.

Thursday Update:

Here is the group picture. Everyone’s individual picture is posted on the bulletin board and all employees get to one vote for their favorite. I have no idea how many votes I got, but I bet is was zero as I didn’t even vote for myself. First place went to Ike & Tina Turner, second place went to One Night Stand and third was Scary Clown. For the record the clown is not standing on anything, unlike the fellow in the middle, he is about 6’6″ tall and weighs in around 300 pounds and has a naturally gravely voice.

Chasing Steeples: The Fall Edition


After gifting the Club the use of his spot and tickets for the past two Aiken Spring Steeplechases, this time President Tom gave us the opportunity to attend the Fall Steeplechase. He donated to us the spot for one vehicle with two extra parking passes in case someone didn’t want to meet at our house and walk over, plus a dozen tickets to get in the gate.

Six club members claimed the tickets right off, us, Karol & Dennis Mason and Emilie & Kirill Skliar, and maybe because it was sort of last minute, no one else piped up. The six of us that were going started looking for guests to bring because we didn’t want Mr. Varallo’s largess to go unused. By Friday we thought we had all but one spoken for. But by Saturday we only had one guest use a ticket to get in, a friend of Karol & Dennis’s, named Lee. Sigh. Their loss.

On Thursday Donna and I had to run an errand, so we cruised by the field to see if we could eyeball where spot #262 was and were excited to see it was near a jump. It wasn’t until we got there Saturday morning to set up that we realized it was right at the jump. As before with previous steeplechases the Bogarduses and Masons arrived practically as the event gates opened to set up. Soon the other spots started to fill up too. As our direct neighbors arrived, we traded introductions and offered up food and drink. They reciprocated to be friendly and because everyone always brings way more than they need to these events.

We had two portable grills (one charcoal, one gas) setup for cooking the hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken & vegetable shish kabobs. There were Fritos and a couple bags of chips with about four different kinds of dip to nibble on. There were crackers, cheese, sliced ham and venison sausage for grazing, with brownies and an Italian raisin bread for your sweet tooth. To drink we had iced tea, soft drinks/mixers, beer, Jack Daniels, Vanilla Crown Royal and a bit of bubbly.

Spot #262 was not only right at the exit of a jump, but as it turned out, in 4 of the 5 races, the horses lined up to start right in front of us. Unlike flat races where the horses are slotted into a starting gate, in steeplechase they parade from the paddock and then line up in reverse start order behind a judge who then walks them in a line towards the rail. There they do a left face maneuver, so when another judge (on foot) waves the red flag, they take off sort of like they just came out of a gate. Because these are naturally skittish thoroughbred race horses it never goes smoothly, yet somehow they always end up with a reasonably straight start.

In between the first and second race we had some special guests arrive to liven up our tent with youth and conversation, Courtney (Lee’s daughter), along with her friends Little Courtney, somebody possibly named Bridget and a couple others. We fed them some of our food and we helped ourselves to some of their liquor. They watched the carriage parade with us, then the second race, and just as quickly as they came, they disappeared. Left behind the booze though, so we knew they’d be back.

In between the third and fourth race a fellow MMC member Chip was on his way to somewhere when he noticed the Club sign in front of Dennis’s truck, so he stayed long enough to say hello before he too disappeared. In between the fourth and final race Emilie & Kirill headed over into the infield to walk through the shops and take in some of the pageantry that is steeplechase, which Donna and I and the Mason’s had already done earlier.

Emilie & Kirill came back after the fifth and final race finished. Not long after, Little Courtney and Bridget popped back in to join us as we all whiled away some time waiting for the crowd of hurry-homes to disperse some before attempting our own exit. Bridget got Dennis to pop the cork on her bottle of sparkling wine and the nine of us toasted another fantastic day at the races in Aiken. We couldn’t have asked for better weather or a better spot to watch the races. Thanks Tom!