Miatatude

Waited all day before even using the Miata for an early evening trip to Bruster’s and then a stop at Publix for a couple items. The Moon and the planet Venus staged a beautiful display along with the fading twilight in the western sky to go along with the pleasant temperatures to make a really nice night for a top down cruise. Tomorrow the brats start back to school, so the morning commute will be crowded with Moms in a hurry, oh joy.

Started up, went down, still down.
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Backed the car out of the garage and put the top up. It was wash day. The car still has dirt on it from the gravel road to the B&B in NC that we stayed at for the Miatas at the Gap at the end of July. The topper was last night’s drive, we came home with a nose plastered with little bugs. Windexed all the windows inside and out. Vacuumed it out and everything. Pulled it back into the garage and there it sits. Did the odometer spin backwards for a bit and then forwards the same amount, thereby canceling any mileage? Or do they just count forward motion?

Finally decided to replace the floor mats. They look black in dim light but during the day they look gray. Also every time I pull them out to vacuum under them they leave behind about 20 of the little rubber nubs that fall off the back. They have held up well considering they are nearly 7 years old and have been stepped on several times each day in that time frame. I’m going with the $39 ones from Serious Auto. They don’t have a logo which is just the way I wanted them. The price is at least $20 cheaper than any other mat out there, what kind of quality will I get? Don’t worry I’ll let you know.

Started down, went up, still up.
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Made it back to Aiken in the rental car with 3 hours and 50 miles to spare. We left at 7:00am and got back to our driveway at 3:00pm. 8 hours is a long time to be cooped up in that air conditioned cocoon of an automobile, but it served it’s purpose well, we are not nearly as frazzled as we would have been if we had spent that same amount of time and mileage in the Miata.

In spite of the heat, I could not resist putting the top down as I led Donna back to the rental place to return the car. It also felt really good to be connected to the road again, turn the wheel the car turns, step on the gas the car lurches forward and everything was back in perspective again (everything was bigger than me) 🙂

Donna read the whole office of Enterprise people the riot act about the shabby rental the gave us. The very low front tire that made the car ride funny to the melted crayon in the back seat to the general filthiness of the car. She told them of her sister’s comment upon seeing the car, “Did you get this from Rent-A-Wreck?” As their way of apologizing they took the rental fee for one day off the price. A nice offering, but we still probably won’t go back to them when we rent a car in September to take the trip up north.

The only time we drove the Impala today was a 3 mile trip to the New York Pizza World to have dinner with about half the gang. On the way down there were 4 of us in the car, but on the way back we filled the thing up with 6 people. Brother-in-law’s nephew and his 3 boys got dropped off to eat and need a lift back. We were all headed back to our house for cake and ice cream for Donna’s brother’s 50th birthday party. Not only the 16 who ate pizza, but almost everybody else who was there crammed into the living room for the “party.” Paul (said brother-in-law) regaled us with Jimmy Buffet, Jim Morris and other’s songs on his guitar. By 10pm everyone headed back to their respective houses so that Donna and I could get to bed. They all knew we had to get up early for the big drive home the next day.

Hit the road about 8am to finish the rest of the trip to Orlando. The Impala is quiet and eats up interstate expansion joints smoothly. It seems to get pretty good gas mileage and the AC is powerful enough to put frost on your nose in the middle of summer. The radio has this cool feature that if you are tuned into a station that has this feature it will put the call letters in the display where the frequency is for every one else. It also keeps playing after you shut the car off and remove the key, but shuts off as soon as any door gets opened. Another feature that is disconcerting until you are used to it is the headlights and dome light stay on for a few minutes after you shut the car off and walk away. One “feature” I’ve never liked is the automatically locking of the doors when the car is put in gear. As a matter of fact we actually locked our selves inside the car for a while. The first time Donna came to a stop she just turned the car off. It was still in drive. The doors didn’t automatically unlock. Just using the lock button on the doors would *NOT* unlock the car. Putting the shift lever into park didn’t work either. We had to put the car in park, start it up and then shut it off again before the locks would release.

At lunch we went out to run an errand and it was already so hot that we put the top up. For the afternoon we stretched the cockpit cover over the car with the top up and the windows down to keep the interior cool. Not pretty, but functional. Crazy Red sells one that is designed to go over a raised top (and roll/style bars,) but I’m not sure it would be worth buying at this point as we just bought this one. Maybe if we end up with a lot of the raised top situations…

After work we stopped by Enterprise Car Rental to pick up our temporary ride. This weekend we are headed down to Orlando for a mini-family reunion. If we were going for a week we would have drove the Miata, but where roughly 1/4 of the total 3 day weekend time is spent in the car on the interstate we want something a little more comfortable for the trip. We reserved a standard size with a CD player, we ended up with a full size Chevy Impala and just a tape deck, no big deal. The Impala is BIG (at least compared to the Miata,) on the drive home Donna was following me in the Miata and I could barely see her in the rear view mirror. Tonight we were going as far as Savannah and then finish the trip on Saturday morning.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
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