POS Racing Fan Club

POSAfter breakfast in the condo Donna and I drove over to Roebling Road Raceway outside of Savannah, GA to see a couple of friends race in an SCCA Solo1 event.

John is a heck of a driver that I hate following through the twisty roads on MMC events, because I know if I try and keep up with him I’ll end up getting in trouble. On the road he drives with what seems like abandon, but he always keeps in on the pavement. On the track he is a terror and usually once an event he manages to find the dirt, but he still has wrapped up first place in the southeast region in the CSP class. The car he drives, and consequently the race team, was christened by his wife the day he brought the well used red early model Miata home from the dealer, POS (and I’m betting you can figure what those three initials stand for.) After these last few years POS now has an alternate nickname, the Money Pit. Hey, it keeps John off the streets, literally.

Today when we got to the track John made me an honorary pit crew member by giving me a ball cap embroidered with the words POS Racing and a small red Miata complete with his car number in the white meatball on the door. I’m not sure if you get to pick your own number, but John’s is 54 and I wonder if it has anything to do with his propensity to leave the track and Officers Toody & Muldoon.

When we got back from watching racing this afternoon I changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor. At 48,840 the car was about at the halfway point between Mazda’s recommended service points of 45,000 and 52,500.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 446

Rearranging Sand

Sand PipesThese pipes are part of a $16 million dollar “beach renourishment program on the south and east coast of HHI. They dredge up sand from the bottom of the sea a 1/4 mile offshore and pump it to the beach to widen the slowly retreating beach. They’ve finished the section in front of the resort and have moved further along the shore which is closer to the dredging area so these lengths of pipe are not needed right now.

Morning walk on the beach, hhicondo.com business, lunch at Gruby’s NY Deli, washed the mineral encrusted water spots off the Miata (parked under a sprinkler here at the resort), read some on the balcony in the sunshine, visited Jerry the Condo King and his bride Donna before they treated my Donna and I to dinner at Julep’s where we eat for the trifecta (appetizer, entree & dessert), short walk on the golf cart path and write a little blog post.

Full freaking day.

Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 445

Hey! We’re At The Beach!

Hey! We're At The Beach!Last week the mountains, this week the shore. We are down in Hilton Head for a little business and a lot of fun.

Took the afternoon off and got to ride here with the top down (windows and windblocker up.) Traffic was pretty good except for both ends of the drive. Friday midday in Aiken must bring out the grannies and Friday late afternoon brings out the crowds, even in the off-season, in Hilton Head. After unpacking in our condo by the beach we went back out to get some dinner. It was a toss up between Japanese and pizza. We were leaning towards the pizza and the clincher was the Japanese place wasn’t even going open for another 45 minutes. There were two pizza places I had picked out of the restaurant guide and we missed the first because I never spotted the landmark (Fudruckers) that they said they were behind. We found the second one and were not really glad we did.

If you ever find yourself here, don’t eat at Pizza Roma in Coligny Plaza. We were the only ones in the place and maybe we should have taken the hint. The salad was good and plentiful, but the pizza was nothing special. We would have been better off getting a DiGiornos at Bi-Lo and heating it up in the oven at the condo. I have always said that pizza is like sex, there is no such thing as bad, just different. Well now I certainly hope that I never get to experience the sex that is the parallel to tonight’s pizza…

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 441

I’m Glowing

We got to the shopping center early where the restaurant was for the MMC monthly meeting, so we decided to kill a little time taking a walk around. We got about halfway down the strip when we decided to duck into Circuit City for a restroom break. They were in the back of the store and when I came out I was facing the keyboard & mouse area. The OEM Dell keyboard has a couple of sticky and or hard to hit keys that have become annoying. The biggest culprit is the space bar.

Plenty to choose from ranging in price from $25 to $75. The one that intrigued me the most was one that had back lit keys. The computer sits in a dark room with one light aimed at the back of the desk behind the monitor for that indirect lighting effect. Because I have to look at the keys to type this thing was made for me. Seventy bucks later I was the proud owner of a Saitek Eclipse II Keyboard.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 439

1.6% of Our Fame

Banksia SkyThe picture in last Wednesday’s post was on TV. After I showed the image to a couple folks at work I was told I should sent it in to the local morning weather guy because every morning he shows a picture that a viewer has sent in. I emailed it to him on Friday and he replied that it would get shown on Monday at 5:15 and 6:15AM. When Donna asked if I wanted to get up a little earlier so I could see the picture, I told her no, I’d already seen it.

There are a lot of people at work who get up early and must get their weather in the morning from Matt Monroe because I had a whole lot of people catch me Monday (and a few on Tuesday) and tell me they saw my picture on Channel 6. One person tells me I won a coffee cup with some ground coffee. Another tells me I will probably get an umbrella. I think both of those are promotions from other stations or previous weather people, but never having watched the local morning news, who knows. I vow to watch on Tuesday morning to see what actually happens during the viewer photo segment.

I of course forget all about it. Then last night a friend from the MMC emailed me to say she saw my photo on TV on Monday and I should watch this morning to see one of hers, so I rolled out of bed about 10 minutes earlier than normal and watched the morning weather. Matt did the weather and then went to a commercial. Huh? No picture? When they came back from the break, there was Carol’s photo of some high mountains and blue sky. Oooh and aaah from Weather Guy, cheery comment from Anchor Woman and back to the news. No mention of a coffee mug. No umbrella. Nothing but using up about fifteen seconds of our 15 minutes.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 438

All-hallow-even

As is my holiday tradition, I am listening to the The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s 1938 Halloween radio presentation of the War of the Worlds. Its available, along with most of the rest of the Mercury Theatre’s works, here: mercurytheatre.info

I didn’t listen to my next favorite version of The War of the Worlds, Jeff Wayne’s 2 CD rock musical version with narration by Richard Burton. Maybe I’ll take the CDs to work tomorrow. There is an upcoming CGI movie version coming out… Just watched the trailer for it and it gave me goose bumps.

I’m typing very quietly with all the lights off (except for the cyclops of the TV) because for the first time in history we are not handing out candy to kiddies. Nearly all the kids in our neighborhood are now too old for trick-or-treating. The only ones of proper age we have seen in recent years are driven into the area by their parents from far flung sections of the city. With the proliferation of church sponsored “fall festivals” and the mall, downtown businesses, city rec center candy giveaways, we didn’t think anyone would miss our one little household. Even the local college campus is holding a family friendly trick-or-treat event. And now we won’t have to deal with the too old trick-or-treater.

While talking of Halloween plans at work today, I mentioned most of what I said in the previous paragraph, my boss related a story of how several years back he had two, probably 16ish, teenagers dressed in their typical baggy pants plus ratty t-shirts holding plastic Wal-Mart bags ring his doorbell. One half heartedly mumbled, “Trick or treat.” The other didn’t speak because he was to busy exhaling cigarette smoke.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 438

Monday Moratorium

 
 

Started up went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 438