Miatatude

Squish

When I got into the car today after work I noticed that when I stepped on the floor mat it went squish. It was soaking wet.

Admittedly it has rained like crazy the last few days, but there was no way I could track in that much water. In the Miata world there are two main reasons why there would be a lot of water on the floor, not counting leaving the top down in the rain, a plugged drain in the door molding and a plugged A/C drain line.

The water was only on the driver’s side of the car which eliminates the A/C drain line because that soaks the passenger foot well. Must be the hollow in the door molding. I poked the long thin brush I have for cleaning Camelback hoses down there and it wasn’t plugged at all. A mystery.

I dried out the area as best I could and we’ll see if the water reappears.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 433

Henderson Heritage Preserve

We got out this morning to visit the Henderson Heritage Preserve north of town to discover the two caches that are there and scout possible locations for placing our own.

It is in two separate sections and there is one cache in each. The first one, Utorthent, was in the newer of the sections and the more groomed of the two. It was a very nice walk and a nice hide of an ammo can, the GPSr never read closer than 12′, but we found it without too much problem. Round trip hike turned out to be 2.8 miles and we only covered about 1/2 of the marked trails.

We then got in the car and drove the 2 miles to the parking area for the second section. We were looking for a cache called Sandhills in this one. This cache was only a 2 mile round trip, but it was through a more primitive piece of woods and included a small stream crossing and a nearly all uphill walk to the cache. As a bonus, on the way back downhill to the car we spooked a pair of deer. They came from near the road and crossed in front of us going deeper into the preserve in a big hurry.

Both places have a couple possibilities for cache placements, now I just have to figure out who to talk to to get permission. I emailed to both people who have caches in Heritage Preserves in this area and only got one reply and he was no help.

In a total reversal of standard procedure, I washed the Emperor the day after an MMC event. Even went the extra mile, vacuumed the interior and cleaned and preserved the leather seats.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 358

Dead Bugs in the Middle of the Car

2009 Bug Splat WinnersTonight was the MMC’s Annual Bug Splat Rally. With only five cars in attendance nearly everyone was assured of a prize. From left to right, John Nicholls, Closest to the Dot with his prize of Bullseye BBQ Sauce; Dave Schumacher with the Cleanest Car prize of Bug Stickers to use next year; Donna Bogardus with Bath Time Stickers to wash the Most Bugs off the nose of the Emperor and Denny Smith with the Trophy for Biggest Bug. If you look just to the right of the Big Bug on the Trophy you will see the ghostly apparition of Rudy Wilmoth who was the driver of the only car not to take home a prize. Don’t feel too sorry for Rudy as he and Patti are past winners of the coveted BBT and are just coming off a two year streak of winning the Cleanest Car.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 356

This Is Sad

At the MMC monthly meeting tonight everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Most of the time was spent on future event planning, where we hammered out the details for the next couple of month’s. Like what restaurant we would be holding the next 2 meetings at and where we would meet for the monthly breakfast. Then something odd happened, one member had the audacity to suggest a car related event…

When I got home from the meeting I turned on the ballgame and the FRS were beating the MFY 3 to 1 after 3-1/2 innings. The Yankees then scored 8 runs in the bottom of the 4th inning and it has been downhill every since. I wonder if it is too early to call in sick for tomorrow?

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 324

20th Anniversary Miata

20AEMazda announced its 20th Anniversary Edition of the Miata the other day. Well, actually it is the 20th Anniversary Edition of the Roadster (what the car is called in Japan) because it is only for the home market, not for the US or anywhere else. All it really amounts to is a special white paint, two-tone red & black leather seats and some badges.

I was hoping for a repeat of the 10th Anniversary Edition, a worldwide limited production run of 7500 with a really cool blue with a bunch of special options, a scale model and some other stuff. If it had come in that blue I might have gotten Donna to let me shorten that 484 day countdown some.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 319

Time Travel

I went outside to get the paper this morning and discovered I had been magically transported to November. It was cold, well relatively, anyway. We even put the top up on the way to work and probably will again tomorrow when it is supposed to be in the middle 40s.

Tonight when we went out to pay bills we grabbed two on the other side of Aiken. Both of these were considered small in size. We are slowly integrating the smaller hides into our repertoire. We were six out of nine geocaching on Saturday morning with the fifth one being find #100. The three missed were in the small category, but we weren’t totally hopeless at that size, two of the six finds were considered small.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 198