Miata Maintenance Day

Seeing as the CTBNL hit the 65,000 mile plateau on Saturday, the other day when Donna went off to the gym, I jacked up the Miata, rotated the tires and changed the oil.

I was going to give the car a bath too, but after eating lunch I didn’t want to go back outside. Besides I did not want to violate Russ’s Rule for Retirement. To wit: Do one thing a day. You have all sorts of things you need to do and have been waiting until you more free time, there are all the things you want to do for yourself and then there is all to things your wife wants for you to do. It can overwhelming, so pick one thing and do just that one thing, don’t try to do too much.

Now you might think that changing the oil and rotating tires is two different items, but to me, I have always combined them. This is because to only real easy way to get to the oil filter in the Miata is to remove the right front wheel. And while I guess quite possibly you could jack up that front side and remove the one wheel, but then you would need to make sure the car is level to allow all the oil to drain out. That and you are now already 1/4 of the way to rotating the tires anyway…

65,000 Something or Other Things

One of the challenges for this year’s Moss Motoring Challenge was “Monster Truck.” We had a bead on a place in Chesterfield, SC that is called Monster Truck Ranch that gives rides in one. I have the address saved, figuring we would drive up and see if they’d let us take a photo, but we have never made the effort to take the 2-1/2 hour one-way drive up.

Last Friday Donna found an event that included Monster Trucks at a drag strip outside Orangeburg (about 50 miles away) that was for Friday and Saturday. We decided to go on Friday early and hopefully beat the crowds. We packed a lunch and figured we pay the $25 entry fee and see if we could get close to a Big ‘Ol Scary Truck and maybe watch some dragsters. Online it said it started at 9:30 and we timed our arrival perfectly. Except the gates weren’t open! All that was in line was one car, a motor home and the port-a-potty suction truck. There seemed to be no activity at all and after a few minutes we just turned around and came home.

On the way back on the outskirts of the thriving metropolis of Kitching Mill, SC the CTBNL blinked by 65,000 miles on the odometer.

On Saturday afternoon we were bored, so we took another drive to Orangeburg. Turns out there was another option to possibly get a picture of a Monster Truck in the very same town. This was a make-up event from a rained out May Spring National Monster Truck Showdown and was at the Orangeburg County Fairgrounds.

On our way to that show we passed right by the drag strip where the other event was, so we popped in to see if we could see anything from outside. Bingo, the results are above.

Even though we now had a picture for the challenge we opted to drive the extra 10 miles over to the fairgrounds. First we cheated a bit and followed a road that took us around the back of the fairgrounds to see if we could get a better “over the fence” picture than the one we already had. No dice there, so we drove around to main entrance to see we could get a decent view that way. Nope again. So we came on back to Aiken.

6 hours + 250 miles = 3 points.

Wreck-It Ralph the Raccoon Wreaks Havoc


We knew my Medieval Bird Feeder Modification didn’t work because a week and a half or so ago we caught the raccoon sitting on top1 pleased as punch munching seeds. We let the seed get used up, either by him or the backyard birds and didn’t refill it, hoping he would move on.

This past weekend when we went shopping we bought another bag of seed and filled it up. Every thing was fine for the first couple of days, but then on Tuesday morning when we came outside to eat breakfast. nearly half the seed was gone. Our pesky raccoon was back. And with a vengeance. Not only had it gobbled down $3 or $4 worth of bird seed, but to show his displeasure with our attempt at starving him, he knocked a glass bowl birdbath off a railing shattering it on the deck and also knocked the adjacent hummingbird feeder off its hook to the ground, emptying its contents, but fortunately not breaking it.

I picked up the glass birdbath pieces off the deck, cleaned off the hummingbird feeder, refilled it and hung it back up. Because this was happening at night after Donna and I got off the porch and I figured most birds wouldn’t feed at night I opted to take a set of small vice grips and clamp the spring-loaded seed tray cover down, so nothing could get in there, be it raccoon or squirrel or bird.

This morning, the vice grips were still in place and the hummingbird feeder was too, but somehow that sneaky bastard had managed to completely empty the sugar water out of it. The ground underneath the hanging feeder was dry too, unlike the dark dirt under yesterday’s ground dwelling feeder. I cannot image how that was possible.

Tonight I clamped the bird feeder shut and carried the hummingbird feeder into the house. I’ll let you know how Wreck-It Ralph retaliates.

A Walk in the Woods

For the first time in over a year, we went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods today. We started at Fulmer’s Stables and headed basically uphill to Mystery Field and then worked our way back downhill to the start for a nice little sweat inducing 3.1 mile walk. There was one couple in a truck with a horse trailer and one Miata with us in it in the parking area when we started. There were about a dozen trucks with horse trailers and one Miata in the parking area when we got back. The natives were up.

We have taken to listening to podcasts of the BBC4 interview show Desert Island Discs while having breakfast or lunch on the screened porch. The premise is simple, a host interviews a famous (or if they are British, somewhat famous to us) person and at the end will cast them away on a desert island. During the interview we get the list of the 8 songs they will be allowed to take with them and why they are picking them. The guests are then asked to pick just one to save in the event a wave is going to wash their collection out sea. They also get to pick one book and one luxury item to be stranded with them.

The show has been running for the last 76 years! They have almost 2,000 shows, some from as far back as 1946, available to listen to online. Right now we are cherry picking from people we know and want to hear, but sometimes I will just scroll real fast in the podcast app and stop on a random show and they too have been very entertaining. A couple days ago I happened on the author Bill Bryson that way and he talked about his book called A Walk in the Woods about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Both Donna and I thought we had read it before, but couldn’t be sure, so I found the kindle version. We both finished reading it and now we are still not so sure, but we both did enjoy the book, be it our first or second reading.

Lucked Out

Pulled off the inside door panel this morning to see what was going on with the door not opening from the inside. The worse case scenario would have been that the cable from the inside handle to the latch would be broken. I did a little search on the Miata.net Forum and it seems like the cable is not available by itself, you have to buy the entire inside door handle assembly which included the handle and the two cables (one each for the latch and the lock.) The best case scenario would have been that the interior door handle itself had broken somehow.

I got lucky. Back a couple of years ago, just a couple months after we bought the CTBNL, I had worked out a deal where I got the OEM silver interior bits from a newer Miata to brighten up the cockpit some. I saved the old black pieces those items replaced, so I actually had an extra set of interior door handles in a box in the garage.

The top picture is of the back side of the passenger handle. The blue and yellow plastic pieces are where the cable ends hook into the mechanism. If you hover over the image you can see the arm that the yellow piece is on has physically separated the part you pull on to open the door.

Hope The Window Doesn’t Quit Too

The reason we were at the one-lane bridge yesterday was because we needed a picture of one for the Motoring Challenge. It is worth three points. We have one not too far from home that we used for the challenge back in 2015, so we didn’t want to use it again and we wanted something a little more scenic for this year.

Friday night, while sitting in the hotel, Donna asked, “See if there are any one-lane bridges in south Georgia?” The first one I found was this beauty and it was perfect. Even with having to drive a 1/4 mile of dirt road to get there.

Of the half dozen or so photos we took, the one above was my favorite of the bunch, but there is one problem, no person with flyer in it. We’ll probably submit the one below for the challenge. Who knows, we might be driving right by it on the way home tomorrow, maybe we’ll stop in again…

Tonight when I went to fill it up with gas, I couldn’t get out of the car. I pulled on the door handle and it moved, but nothing happened. Naturally I could not believe what was happening, so I tried pulling it several more times with the same negative results. I could reach out the window and lift the outside handle and the door would open.

I wasn’t trapped, but the window needs to keep working or I would be. I shouldn’t be worried, it isn’t exhibiting any hint of troubles, but then again neither was the inside door handle. I’m guessing that a cable has broken or come unhooked inside the door, should be an easy fix when we get home.