Year: 2024

Blue Is The New Gray


The guys at PDX Wraps did a great job. The vinyl is from Avery and the color is called Gloss Bright Blue Metallic. I think it looks like a combo of the two blues that I had on previous Miatas, 3/4 Laguna Blue from the ’95 with a 1/4 of Mariner Blue of the ’90 mixed in to darken it a bit.

It was raining all morning and it quit about half way on the to pick up the car. Then, the sun made an appearance for a few hours after reclaiming the car. Seeing as I was close to a couple Post Offices in the town of Tualatin I stopped and took their photos with the new car. After grabbing the DCU I headed over to get the regular Post Office. The photo above is of that, but I didn’t realize, until I got home and downloaded the photos that my left forefinger featured prominently in the upper left of the picture.

At first, I thought, well I’ll get back there, but then I opted to try and photoshop out the finger. I didn’t turn out too bad, with a causal look you might not notice anything. If you want to see the finger, hover over the image…

Its A Wrap

The folks who are wrapping the Miata posted an Instagram reel yesterday that showed what they were working on that day. Along with the commercial vans, fuel tanker trailer, semi trailer, a race car and a Range Rover getting a color change was this cute little foreign car. They called me 4PM today to say I could come and get the car tomorrow morning.

On an unrelated note, I started another jigsaw puzzle this evening and while I was sorting pieces I stepped on something. When I looked down I saw the missing puzzle piece from yesterday. How I missed with my high powered bicycle headlight I’ll never really know, but my money is on the alternate universe theory.

Did it Again

Alternate Title: Sunset Surf Shack.

A month ago, I did this puzzle and when I finished it, it was missing two pieces. A couple weeks later when I vacuumed under the puzzle table I found those two missing pieces. So, after finishing the Monument Valley puzzle, I was working on at that time, I decided to do the puzzle again now that I had all the pieces.

When I finished it this second time there was one missing piece! Thing is, it is a totally different piece! I got out a high-powered bike headlight and searched the floor looking for this missing piece. No luck, I don’t know where it went. My guess it slipped into an alternate universe, quite possibly like the 2 original missing pieces. My only hope is in 2 weeks the piece will return magically like those two other ones.

But if it does, do I attempt to try and finish the puzzle again? Am I risking another missing piece, another totally different piece? Another alternate universe?

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

One-Armed Bandit Edition of SORT
As of Monday, November 18, 2024 at 16:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1955 MG TF 2011 Ford Ranger 2011 Ford Taurus
Due to the default width of my browser, when I browse through the car auctions, I see the listings in three columns. This layout reminds me of the classic three-window slot machines in Las Vegas. Today, I decided to select my cars based on the first row that had a car from each category. However, due to the dynamic nature of auctions, they were no longer aligned in the same row upon my last check. Nevertheless, I captured a screenshot of my ‘jackpot’ as evidence.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1953 Willys M38A1 Sold for $16,500 on 11/13/24
Off-Road: 1953 Dodge M37 Bid to $4,700 on 11/13/24
Touring: 2001 Stewart & Stevenson M1078 4×4 Sold for $30,800 on 11/13/24

It’s Sunday So…

…its post office hunting day.

Instead of my usual go west into the heart of the big city I turned my eyes east to go a bit rural. And it was worth it. After the first 6 or so miles the roads turned very rural, all twisty, narrow and traffic free with plenty of elevation changes. Perfect Miata roads, almost. Today was a rainy day, so while I enjoyed driving them I didn’t push the car too much because I’m still getting used to the new cars handling and grip.

Chipped Tooth

Sometime in August I chipped a tooth. I was biting into a piece of kielbasa when I noticed what I thought was the bone in the sausage I hit. It was a piece of bone, but it was accompanied by the bottom third of #7 the tooth just to the right of the two big front teeth. I was also overdue for my 6-month cleaning, but August and September were a very busy time in taking care of Donna, so it was hard enough to sneak away for an hour a week to go grocery shopping, let alone a dentist appointment. The broken tooth didn’t expose the nerve, so I just lived with it.

After Donna passed away I starting making appointments, eye exam (it had been 3 years), a primary care doctor visit (a couple months overdue) and a dentist appointment. October 8th was the dental visit. I got my teeth cleaned and besides the broken tooth I also had a couple of cavities that needed filling, so a follow appointment was penciled in for the 15th.

Cavities were filled and the dentist thought he could recreate the bottom 1/3 of the tooth with the same composite material that he used for the fillings. It looked great, I had a full tooth again. It lasted 3 weeks and came out while eating some popcorn. I didn’t even hit a kernel, just came off. They set up another appointment for November 12th. I thought for sure I was going to get a crown, but he thought it would be worth it to try one more time with the composite recreation of the bottom of #7.

This time the fix lasted less than a day, it came off while I ate my breakfast of Chex cereal with banana slices. I called the dentist office and got an appointment for today the 20th. I was just pulling into the dentist office parking lot when my phone rang, the dentist was not feeling well, so he wasn’t coming in.

We’ll try again next Wednesday the 20th.

800 Mile Thoughts

After 6 weeks of ownership, 800 local miles driven and 8 modifications added I am almost totally happy with the car. There are a three more modifications I have scheduled to do next week and I won’t say I’ll be totally finished changing or adding things then, but I’d like to think I will be.

I have noticed three things that I kinda wish were different, but do not diminish the love of the car in any meaningful way:

1. The car has heated seats which are nice, but I wish they operated like in the Mini. Right now, if you turn on the heat at one of the three settings it stays at that level after turning the car off, so the next time you get in the heated seats come back on at whatever level they were. In the Mini after shutting off the car and 15 minutes elapse the heated seats will turn off.

2. The power windows have a one touch feature for down, but not for up, you have to hold the switch to raise the windows. And when you unlatch the roof to drop the top, the windows go down a third of the way so the top will clear the window, but they don’t automatically go back up. MX5Things makes a module that you can add to get the auto up, but I’m not sure it is worth the $120 to me.

3. There is a back-up camera, but the guidelines are static. On every other car I’ve been in with a backup camera the guidelines bend with turning the steering wheel to give you an idea if you will clear the side obstacles or not.