Where Is The Bilge Pump On This Thing?

At our lunchtime walk around the parking lot the sky was looking kind of iffy. Donna asked if I thought that we should put the top up and I waved her off. As a precaution when I got back inside I checked the radar loop on Weather.com and it looked like the line of thundershowers was moving north and east away from us, so I forgot all about the rain. For about 10 minutes. That is when the bottom fell out. If you were to look in the Microsoft’s Encarta for the word deluge, a video of what happened this afternoon would appear there.

It rained hard, like a cow pissing on a flat rock in a flowing stream, for at least 20 minutes. After 5, I knew I was in trouble. When the storm passed I wandered out to the parking lot to inspect the damages. The cockpit cover was soaked and when I peeled it back the inside looked barely wet. I did a quick sigh and felt the driver’s seat bottom. Uh, oh, it went squish, squish. That’s when I noticed the puddle of water under the seat. 😯 There was about an inch of rainwater under there. I went into the trunk and got my hand towel I use for quick detailing and started to sop up the puddle. After about a dozen dips and then squeezing out the water onto the asphalt the remaining water was at least not in danger of slooshing around on the drive home. The passenger side didn’t have a puddle, everything was just soaked through. I used a bunch of paper towels and dried the rest of the surfaces off. The seat bottoms and the “carpet” was still very wet.

Once I got home I pulled the seats and popped off the sill plates so I could peel back the carpet and dry underneath. I ended up using 6 full size bath towels to get all I could get dry in the cockpit. The colored and shredded recycled 2 litter 7-Up bottles that Mazda uses for carpet in the car is no real problem, it should eventually dry with no issues. But underneath that on each side are a couple of pieces of fiber padding that acted like sponges and they will not be 100% dry when I button the car back up later tonight. I may just rip the soggy padding out and replace it with something else later…