Motoring to a Miata Club Meeting

Thursday was the Masters Miata Club February Dinner Meeting and because they were meeting at a restaurant we like and haven’t been to in a dog’s age, we went. Also factoring in was the weather, for once in a quite a while we caught a day when the temperatures were actually above normal, so we could ride with the top down. For an appetizer, we took a couple of motoring challenge photos on the way over and for dessert, we grabbed one, on the way home.

Runners-Up Again

The results of the 2017 Moss Motoring Challenge are in and we finished solidly in the Runner-Up field once more. We scored a total of 243 points and ended up tied with 4 other people for 16th place. Although if you go to the winners list on this page we are marked as tied for 19th with another person even though the two of us have the same point total as the 3 tied for 16th.

The first year we did it, 2014, we finished in the #20 spot of the runners up with 128 points. In 2015 we scored 172 points and finished in the number one runner-up spot just 7 points shy of cracking the top three. The year 2016 was a lost cause. The Emperor stared giving us fits, so we didn’t feel comfortable taking road trips in it. We racked up a mere 60 points and didn’t even submit the results. Even if we had, we would have been 27 points shy of making it into the runner-up category.

Trash Compactor

Ninety-two per cent of Americans believe it is important to wash your hands after using the bathroom, but only 66% actually do it. And almost 70% of the folks that do wash, skipped using soap. So, of the last 10 people that used the rest room before you, you would be lucky if maybe 2 washed their hands with soap.

So I can see why the people who do wash their hands, soap or not, exit the restroom using a series of complex dance steps. They dry their hands with paper towels, reach for the door handle with the hand that has the damp paper towels, pull the door open, stop the door from closing with their foot, and then reach back to toss the paper into the trash can.

This leads to the trash cans getting full fairly fast because there is a lot of air in between all those paper towels. The bathroom trash cans here at ASCO get emptied twice a day, once in the morning and then again really late afternoon. So, if I use the restroom just before lunch or mid-afternoon the cans are almost full or in some cases overflowing.

For the last couple of weeks, I have taken it upon myself to play trash compactor. If I’m alone in the rest room1 I’ll put my right foot in front of the door (so it can’t be opened into me), raise my left foot into the trash can and squish all the air out from in between the waste paper. I then perform the above-mentioned exit maneuver to leave the room.

Brown Socks

As a computer draftsman in a manufacturing plant I work in an office, but I’m not really a white-collar worker. I only occasionally have to go out on to the shop floor, so I’m definitely not a blue-collar worker either. I like to think I’m somewhere in between, sort of a chambray-collar worker.

As a result of my middle of the corporate ladder status my typical work attire for the longest time has been a polo shirt with a pair of Dockers khaki pants transitioning to a pair of brown or tan steel-toed shoes with some brown socks. At first the socks were 6 packs of plain cotton dress socks, but then I started buying a couple of three packs at a time with brown or tan socks containing patterns to spice things up: argyle, stripes, dots, etc. The 6 pair of brown socks were stuck in the drawer and I rotated them by placing the freshly laundered ones on the bottom of the existing clean ones, trying not to wear the same pair more than once during a week. Not because I was afraid someone would call me on it, but like rotating your car’s tires, it evened out the wear.

This plan has worked out pretty good, usually as soon as a hole develops in the toe seam or on the bottom at the ball of the foot, the rest of socks from the same 3-pack would fail in the same fashion a short time later. Somewhere along the line a set of 3 outlasted the other set by a large margin, so instead of needing all six socks at one time, sock purchasing became staggered. As soon as the second sock of a pack failed in quick succession, it would be time to buy another 3-pack.

As luck would have it, two weeks ago, socks started wearing out. The first one went, then a couple days later the second developed a hole. The very next day, sock number three gave out as well. I did not immediately go to the store and buy a new 3-pack of brown socks, I considered it, but then I did the math. At this point I was down to just under 40 working days left and I wasn’t really going to wear the tan safety shoes after that, so with my remaining 3 pairs of socks I would need to get just a little more than 12 wearings out of each. When I ride the bicycle to work I normally just keep my dark gray cycling socks on during the day, so that number will get reduced every time I ride in. I think I can make it until March 2nd.

Will the brown socks last, the tension is palpable, stay tuned.

Hey! That Rhymes!

Saturday morning was the first Masters Miata Club Breakfast of the year at the traditional spot, the Steak & Shake in Augusta. Donna and I went with them the first time in 2013 and her eggs were served cold. This, on top of a couple slow or sloppy services at past visits to this franchise, made her swear off ever going the January MMC breakfast again.

My meal was fine back in 2013 and I was feeling bad about not going to a club event in a while, so I convinced Donna to go this year. Well, you can guess what happened, cold eggs. She ordered the bacon, egg & cheese biscuit, but asked them to leave off the cheese. Well, you guessed it, there was cheese on there and that is how she knew her eggs were cold, the slice of cheese was showing no signs of melting what so ever. You can now bet that if the only restaurants left on the face of the planet are Steak & Shakes, Donna will learn to catch wild animals with her bare hands or starve to death before going into one. The sign on the pole outside of our dining spot was the best part of breakfast.

I think the tradition for the Club is over as well because Donna’s wasn’t the only one who got cold food. My hash browns were cold, as were the ones served the wife of the couple who instigated the Steak & Shake breakfasts. As we were breaking up, I heard her say to her husband, “Maybe we should start going across the street to the Cracker Barrel.”

When we started the morning, the was top up because it was cold and we really weren’t thinking Motoring Challenge, so we didn’t bring the clue sheet. Not knowing just what to look for, except for the “Signs of Winter”, I choose a route to breakfast along a very commercial road hoping to catch a Winter Sale sign. No luck.

When talking about this year’s challenge over breakfast when asked what some of the challenges were, we came up a couple off the top of our memory, Roller Derby Rink was one and another was a Sign that Rhymes. Turns out that Augusta has a Roller Derby team and they practice at a rink over on Washington Road which was between where we were and home. A stop was planned to see if they had a sign outside the skating rink. No luck there either, so I started to drive off when Donna said, “No. Even though no roller derby, we still need a plain old roller skating rink.” A few miles from home we pulled into a strip shopping place near Walmart and found my Winter Sale sign at a The Shoe Dept store. So we ended up with a three point day even though we had zero expectations.

Signs of Winter

Signs of Winter 01 – Flurries: Hopefully Wednesday, January 17th’s flurries is the only snow we see this winter here in Aiken. (1/17/18)

Yesterday we had some morning snow flurries here. I watched them come down for a while and when the really small flakes turned into really big flakes, I walked outside to take a photo. By the time I got my coat on and walked out to the north forty where I park the Miata, the flakes had downsized to normal and were not nearly as thick and impressive, but I couldn’t stand around in the snow forever, so I took a couple selfies with the CTBNL in the background and beat feet back indoors. Behold, our first Motoring Challenge point of 2018, Flurries, number one of three for Signs of Winter.

Of course by the time I got back to my desk and looked out the window, the heavy, densely falling flakes were back.

VRBO

A niece is getting married in Lake Tahoe in May and instead of flying out, attending the thing and then flying back we are going to make a long vacation of it. We are going to drive out, spend a week at Lake Tahoe and then drive back. Instead of staying at the Holiday Inn Express for $200 a night or $125 for the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino we thought we’d rent a house or a condo for something in between to have the ability to cook our own meals, etc.

When we found out Donna’s youngest brother was coming down with his wife and kids we thought maybe we’d get a big house that we can all share. They were agreeable to this idea so we went looking for places that had at least 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms. We started with VRBO because that had worked out so well when we rented a cabin on a lake near them in 2015.

We found a nice place in a condo development less than 2 miles away from the wedding venues and requested a booking. We had to give VRBO our charge card number to get the process going and they got their $130 fee right then (refunded if the owner doesn’t confirm the reservation within 24 hours) while the rest of the total would be going to the owner once confirmed. Not long after that the owner wrote back and asked a couple questions, we swapped a few emails and then waited for the next step. And waited. We started to worry.

At about hour 28 the owner emailed us and said although she felt she responded to VRBO within the proper time frame, they did not and we would have to cancel and rebook. The VRBO’s $130 was already listed as pending on the charge card, so I called the VRBO customer support line to make sure that that charge wouldn’t go through because I had cancelled the reservations. I was assured it would not. So, we started the booking process all over again. This time when filling out the request, VRBO’s cut was listed as $129. Why the dollar difference?

This time we didn’t get anything right back from the owner. After 12 hours we emailed the owner. She apologized for the delay saying she is under the weather with the flu, we were all set. Donna and I were under the impression that when we agreed to payment terms and gave VRBO our charge card information that was all we needed to do. But according to her (and the rental’s VRBO page, which we didn’t notice) we pay everything except the $130 booking fee to her. We needed to sign some documents and she would send us an invoice over the weekend. It was now Friday afternoon, so we waited.

And waited. By Sunday approaching bedtime we had still not heard anything. After eighteen total emails between us, VRBO & the owner and 2 separate $130 charges pending we were not feeling comfortable about the process anymore, so we decided to cancel the reservation and start over with a different rental place. I went online to the VRBO site to fill out the form. Using up all but 18 of the allowed 1,000 characters I wrote this, and retired for the night:

We have been trying to book this property since January 9th. The first attempt (Reservation #HA-VZ80Y8) fell through because the owner told us she must have missed the payment deadline and we would have to cancel the reservation and try again, which we did on the 11th. I tried to re-book on the night of the 11th, but my credit card wouldn’t work online. I then spent 15 minutes with one of your Customer Service Reps on the phone trying to use it through her and it wouldn’t work then either. The CSR said you were having problems with a software update. The following day, the 12th, I successfully booked online with a charge card. The owner informed us that she would be send us payment information via email and documents. We have yet to receive anything else from the owner. We are now quite skeptical of this process and would like to cancel our reservation. Please refund the both the $130 for the 1st & the $129 for the 2nd reservations. Thank you, Donna and Brian Bogardus

VRBO had asked for a reason for the cancellation, not finding anything right on point, I picked something that was as close to how we were feeling about the process – Traveler’s reason: I ran into suspicious activity. So, when we got up on Monday morning, there was our cancellation confirmation email from VRBO timed about a minute after I entered it. And 5 minutes later than that an email from the owner who took umbrage at the suspicious activity reason. “She had been in business or 9 years and never had any problems…yadda, yadda, yadda.” Didn’t take her over 48 hours to respond to that though, did it?

Monday night we found a 3 bedroom, 2-1/2 bath place about $50 a night cheaper on Airbnb. Booked it and within an hour we heard back from both Airbnb and the owner confirming our reservation. Done.