Another Day In Oldmanland
The highlight of the day was my once every second fortnight haircut. And when I say haircut, it is more like mowing a lawn, in that I have them put the #2 comb on their shears and just cut everything they can see.
The standard Senior Haircut is twenty-one bucks, but I’m not sure I’ve ever paid that. The first few times I went there I had a $5 off coupon, but ever since then it has been $15 or $16 dollars. They always say something like, “If the boss was here, I’d have to charge the full price.” And although I usually go to the same shop, it’s always different stylists.
Today’s haircut price hit a record low; she charged me just ten bucks. I don’t get it, what is the reason for the random price cuts? They are on a salary and it is so low that are “sticking it to the man” because they get to keep the tip? Maybe they found that the price cut makes the tip go up? Also, what’s with the “if the boss was here” thing? No one is keeping track of how many haircuts they do and comparing it to their money taken in? Whatever it is, I like it, its anarchy.
Club Badge
Back in October 2024 when I was adding a bunch of mods to the new blue Miata I was visiting the the local dealer’s parts department quite often, the same guy was always behind the counter. We got to talking as car guys do (he has a tastefully modded Mazda 3 hatch) and on my 3rd or 4th visit HE came back with the part I ordered and another item he thought I might find a use for, an official Mazda Miata Club badge. His manager had asked him to throw it out because it had been sitting around so long and there is really no demand for it anymore because it was on only certain Miatas in a 3 year span a decade ago.
The third generation Miata ran from 2006 to 2015 and in 2013 they replaced the Touring trim with a Club trim that was more sportier than the Sport trim (really the base car) and harder core than the Grand Touring trim level. The Club got a limited slip differential, some different shocks and a nifty badge that went on the driver’s side front fender. This badge was my gift from Mr. Parts Guy.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do it at the time. When the fourth generation car came out in 2016 the trim levels were again called Sport, Club and Grand Touring. The Club trim was the still the “sportiest” version of the Miata, but they weren’t putting the Club Badge on them anymore. This meant that I didn’t want to put the badge on the new car because it was the Grand Touring trim and that seemed a little like sacrilege to do so.
Fast forward to January and I was now the proud owner of second generation car and that version of Miata didn’t ever have any trim called Club, I felt that is the car I could put the badge on. After all I’ve added new shocks, springs and a freer flowing exhaust to make it more Club like. I put the badge on the left front fender like it would have been on those 2013-2015 cars. In Mazda parts bag along with the badge there was a template on where to put it on the car. Of course the different generations made the template not exactly right, but I fudged it and I think it looks good where I stuck it.
Those early cars only had the one badge, but I thought if I could find another one I’d have badges on both sides. eBay to the rescue, I found one for sale and bought it, it came today. Bucky is now ambidextrously badged.
Morning Walk
This morning’s sunrise appeared like normal, but after breakfast and I stepped outside to go for a walk, the unusual higher temps turned that into a lot of low level fog. By the time I finished my 2 mile trek around Salish Ponds the fog was gone. And the sun sort of came out, there was scattered blue to be seen. After making a coffee I hopped into a Miata and went for a short drive east of here where the roads have more curves.
After lunch I went back out and gave both the boys a bath, even though the rains returns tomorrow and will probably reverse the cleanliness in short order.
Sport, Off-Road, Touring
There Is No Substitute Edition of SORT
As of Monday, March 24, 2025 at 6:00 PM pacific time:
| Sport | Off-Road | Touring |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 Porsche 911 GT3 RS | 1982 Porsche 911SC | 2006 Porsche 911 Carrera |
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| I did this all 911s once before back in November 2022 and a couple weeks later I did it for Miatas as well, so we’ll see if that happens again. | ||
Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1966 Porsche 356 Replica Sold for USD $39,000 on 3/19/25
Off-Road: 1987 Mercedes 240GD Sold for USD $45,000 on 03/19/25
Touring: 1952 Mercedes 300 D Bid to USD $106,000 on 3/18/25
Many Post Office Weekend
The first 4 rows of photos with the blue Miata were from Saturday and the last three with the black car are from today. Twenty-one total and now I have to go back and add some interesting tidbit to each photo, if I can. And because I’m old and my brain is too, I will have an issue dredging up something to say about every one of them. And surprisingly, the greater the chance of that seems to be on the newer photos…
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- Beaverton S&DC This is the last Post Office of the within the city limits. (3/22/25)
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- North Plains – North Plains is the first town you come to outside Portland on the way to the coast on US-26. (3/22/25)
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- Banks – A slight detour off US-26 sent me into the town of Banks, after that, next stop, surf, mist and the rocky coast. (3/22/25)
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- Tolovan Park – I drove right by this, but circled the block because Mr. Google was telling me I had arrived, but I didn’t believe him. I pulled it the lot on the left and went inside to ask where it might be, when I realized I was in the post office. Another half store half USPS. (3/22/25)
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- Cannon Beach – This one was easy, right on the main drag through town. (3/22/25)
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- Seaside – Jeep, Jeep, Ram, Miata. (3/22/25)
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- Gearhart – The red car must be the Postmaster’s and I tried waiting out the man who got out of that black SUV, but gave up. (3/22/25)
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- Hammond – Hammond was originally the site of a Clatsop village called Ne-ahk-stow, and is now technically part of Warrenton. But it has its own ZIP Code, 97121. (3/22/25)
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- Warrenton – This is an older post office that has lost a bit of its “front yard” to make way for the monument to the town’s soldiers. (3/22/25)
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- Astoria – Now this is more like it. This is a real deal US Post Office and Custom House. #/22/25)
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- Clatskanie – My day on the coast over, I headed back home on US-30 along the Columbia River. (3/22/25)
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- Veronia – Dear Verona, thank you from the bottom of my Miata loving heart for having a post office or I wouldn’t have found an awesome sport car road. (3/22/25)
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- Aloha – It has nothing to do with the 50th state. One leading theory is that in the early 20th century, the postmaster named the post office Aloah after her happy memories of a lake resort in Wisconsin, using the Native word for “good morning.” As the story goes, that name was rejected, so the postmaster rearranged the letters into “Aloha,” but the original pronunciation stuck. (3/23/25)
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- Hillsboro – Aah, Hillsboro, we finally meet. When living in Klamath Falls it seemed like all our Amazon packages came through here. (3/23/25)
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- Cornelius – All I could think on the way here was Roddy McDowall played him in the first two Planet of the Apes movies. (3/23/25
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- Forest Grove – In my five minute wait, no other cars came in the parking lot and nobody came out of the post office. (3/23/25)
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- Gaston – Perhaps because of the Cornelius thing all I have for this is the character from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. (23/23/25)
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- Yamhill – There was a guy pressure washing the lot on the left and the one on the right would leave the car mostly hidden, so I pulled up in front, on the wrong side of the street. (3/23/25)
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- Carlton – Okay, I promise no more pop culture references in post office captions. Well, except for this one, Lorenzo Music voiced Carlton the Doorman on the 80s sitcom Rhoda. (3/23/25)
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- Lafayette – The town was founded in 1846 by Joel Perkins, an American pioneer and entrepreneur, who had previously lived in Lafayette, Indiana. (3/23/25)
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- Saint Paul – Named after the Saint Paul Mission founded in 1838 in the Oregon Territory to minister to the Catholic inhabitants of French Prairie. (3/23/25)
Sunday In The Rain
If I go for a drive tomorrow I can get nine more in about a 125 miles, or less than a half a tank of gas… And if I do, I’ll take Bucky
I did go for a drive in Bucky and did photograph nine more post offices in spite of the rain, occasionally heavy. Trouble is I only took eight of the ones I thought I would, but by luck got one more. I can’t trust a saved Google Map that has multiple stops in it. The Google to Samsung transfer hiccups and you end up with just the Start and End points. Which is really wonderful if the start and end were the same place. Also, you can’t start driving before you hit drive button on the map, because it will keep shouting at you to do a U-turn to go back to the starting point first and sometimes with this it’ll drop all the stops too.
Because I made all the Oregon post offices as a Saved Place, they show as dots on the map and I can hop from dot to dot on a loop. The problem of my missing one on the loop today was because in Hillsboro, the regular post office and the DCU1 were about a 1/4 mile apart and their dots kind of overlapped. I didn’t notice the miss until I was home and removing the photographed post offices from my saved places list.
Lucky, number nine was because there was one post office on the way home that would made an out of the way detour next time I came this way. It was in the small town of St. Paul, between OR99W and I-5. Below are today’s outtakes, AKA non post office photos.
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- 10k Miata
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- Waiting On A Train In Hillsboro
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- Forest Grove Mural
