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Savannah - 1991 National - Group Photo Small

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that you could run on the track both Friday and Saturday. I only showed you Friday’s results. That is because there were no Saturday results for me.

Back in 1991 the Miata wasn’t the center of our universe, that didn’t happen for a few more years. We were still into bicycling pretty big and the Miata was just a really sporty means to transport our bikes. So on Saturday morning, instead of driving around Roebling Road Raceway, Donna and I met up with the Coastal Bicycle Touring Club and rode 50 miles with a half dozen or so folks. We met at a Park N Ride lot off I-95 northwest of Savannah and rode to Bluffton to eat lunch at the famous Squat & Gobble, then riding back along the same route.

When the 1991 Miata National Event was through on Sunday morning the last thing we did was drive to a closed shopping center where a professional photographer got up on the roof and took a group portrait. I don’t think every car that was at the event made the trip to get photographed, but a vast majority did. I count 100 cars in the picture above. The first row consists of one car of each color the Miata was available in then (they had just added silver and British Racing Green in 1991.) We got to the photo spot fairly early, but they took one look at our car and told us we would have to wait until everyone else arrived before we would be lined up. They didn’t want us to spoil the Miata aesthetic.

Our crime was a bike rack on the back of the car with two bicycles sticking up. Click on the top photo and it will enlarge, where if you look at the last row where the round looking tree is, there is a gap because no one wanted to park right behind our blue car…

Emperor’s New Clothes – Literally

Emperor's New Clothes

Dumpster Day is Friday. It’ll be placed in front of the garage for ease of use, so if we want to use the Miata during the BKR it needs to spend a month outside. To keep the neighborhood felines from leaving footprints or anything else behind on car I decided to buy a nice little car cover. As long as it doesn’t get to dirty or damaged I should be able to recoup around 50% of my purchase price by selling it once the dumpster is gone.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1199

Proof

The very same forum members who demand photographic proof, especially those on Miata.net, upon seeing this photo, would chime in with, “Now you need to get rid of that 4×4 look.”

Sorry kids, not everyone can live with the slammed stance you want me to have. I admit it does make the Miata look purposeful and bad-ass, but I have enough problems clearing roadkill squirrels and small plastic drinking cups as it is. Not to mention the stray driveway, speed bump traffic calming measure and even the entrance to my own home garage. Anyway, put the two of us in the car along with our weekly provisions and the fender gap settles an inch or so making for a slightly nicer look.

Bridge Run

Did a practice run today for the MMC Leaf Peeping trip in two weeks. Four hundred miles, 10 hours, 4 caches found and three bridges covering three centuries. Two of the bridges are covered, one you can drive on (shown above) and one you can’t and the 3rd is probably so old it never had a car drive over it at all.

Not so sure about the fall colors though. It is very spotty with a lot of trees in places bare of foliage and right nearby green leaves. In two weeks I’m not sure what we’ll get, blazing colors with a few bare trees or brown leaves with a lot of bare trees or something similar to today’s show which was worth the trip, but no postcard views.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1176

Miss Me? I Didn’t Miss You…

We went out west on vacation. I had good intentions of posting a photo a day and maybe even telling some quick story of something that happened as well, but it seemed like once we off a plane in Seattle we didn’t have time to relax until we got back on a plane to come home again.

The sun comes up an hour earlier out there and sets over an hour later, so that, along with the mild temperatures, meant we used up every bit of day doing stuff, only stopping to eat and sleep. On our 7 day trip we used four for visiting 2 different wings of Donna’s family in two different countries, 3 for jamming in some touristy stuff of our own and 2 days for travel (I know that’s more than 7, but I rounded up.) For the first time in any of our numerous visits to the Pacific northwest we actually had a couple days (once again rounding up) of weather that is most associated with that reason, a light rain/mist.

Over the next week I’ll try and pretend that each day is a day from the vacation and do that thing I thought I’d do while I was on vacation.

The above is a Miata of multi-colors spotted while walking off the ferry on Whidbey Island.

Photo Fun

Three pictures are worth 3,000 words…

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1146

Super Moon Other Way

We went out driving in the Miata looking for tonight’s Super Moon. Once we got heading east we could see we were in trouble because we could see the tops of thunder clouds on the horizon. It was still in the upper 80’s, but the sun was down and it seemed pleasant enough, so we kept on driving. Followed one road til it T’d at a dirt road, flipped a mental coin and went left. A little less than a mile we came to a paved road with a recognizable name, so we took it and headed back into town for some ice cream.

Part way back, as we drove along a smooth, two-lane back road there was the moon off to the left. Found a place to stop and take some photos, but by that time it was too high in the sky to look anything different that a plain ol’ full moon. Fooled around snapping photos, but nothing came out worth anything except maybe this picture of The Emperor with a car passing in the background taken facing away from the Super Moon.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1132