Sonata Mileage

47,000 Outlet Store Customers

I-95 Exit 318 in Florida would take you into St. Augustine if you could make it by the two competing Outlet Malls located there. They are on opposite sides of the Interstate and the only difference that I can see is that the one on the west side has the word Premium in its name, but I can tell you this, both parking lots were chock full of cars on a Sunday early afternoon. Probably about 47,000 of them, which coincidentally matched the number on the Purple Whale’s odometer as we drove by.

It is the season opener for the football team the Purple Whales this weekend and unless Payton Manning picks up his game quite a bit (without involving Demaryius Thomas too much, who is on my opponents team) they are going to go down in defeat. It is going to be partly the fault of the owner (that would be me) because one of the wide receivers I had starting for me, did not start for his real team (that would be the Jacksonville Jaguars) and it was announced that he wouldn’t play on Saturday. I should have checked…

46,000 Floridians Waiting At A Light

The Purple Whale clicked past the 46,000 mile mark just before we got off I-95 to head into Palm City, Florida. This is about the fourth trip down to visit Donna’s sister in as many months and we are starting to get the hang of it. It is still a long dang trip, but each successive time it seems to get easier.

The part that we still despise is the side trip off the Interstate to get gas, snacks, a meal or a rest room break. Invariably there is a traffic signal at the end of the off-ramp with a No Turn On Red sign in which we have to wait 2 or 3 minutes to turn in our favor. Then we race 100 yards or so to be stopped at another light with the same or longer wait for the cross traffic left turns, the cross traffic straight across traffic, then we wait for our left turners before we can finally proceed. Sometimes we even have to wait through yet another light a 1/4 mile further down the road before we reach where we want to be. Then we repeat the process all over again to get back to the Interstate.

I think this adds at least 20 extra minutes on top of whatever time it takes to complete what we got off the highway for…

45,000 Cars A Hour

About 15 miles south of Jesup, GA the Purple Whale hit the 45,000 mile mark.

We were traveling north on US 301/GA 23 and if I would have taken a picture through the windshield, with the rear view mirror in the frame, it would have shown almost a mile of two lane road total, with zero other cars on any of it. As we traveled the 45 mile stretch between Folkston and Jesup (a few miles outside the city limits of both towns) we probably saw 2 other cars. Using totally made up calculus, I figure that works out to forty-five thousand cars travel on that road that way a month.

I probably would have taken that photo if I had though to take one using the same framing while Donna was driving on I-75 just north of Ocala, FL. All 6 lanes of the Interstate (3 in each direction) were stuffed with cars with usually nothing more than a car length between them. If you could have stood in the median so you could watch both flows of traffic and could count really, really fast I bet it would come out to be about 45,000 cars an hour.

44,444

44444

We pulled off I-95 at Exit 278 in Florida just so I could drive one mile east, then turn around to go back towards I-95 South and on the way, take this picture.

Sometime in the last week while searching Mr. Miata Dot Net for something or other I came across the post about hitting this little landmark while in the Emperor. Because I’d taken a photo then and I knew we were approaching it in the Purple Whale, I had the camera at hand.

Stay tuned for a picture of the Emperor’s odometer soon, as I think it is getting close to the 144,000 mark which means that 144,444 can’t be too far behind.

44,000 Teary Eyed Fans

Tonight is the MLB All-Star Game and I considered tuning in just to see all 44,000 teary eyed fans at Target Field watching Derek Jeter’s final tip of the hat. But then I realized that Atlantic Broadband, in their continuing efforts to force a cable box on me, has removed the HD feed for FOX from my available channels, so I didn’t turn it on.

It wasn’t until the 4th inning that I realized I could watch it in HD using my MLB.TV package. This turned out to be a good thing as Jeter was already out of the game so I didn’t have to listen to the FOX announcers lavish praise on him. That reminds me, I have been lax in keeping up with Grantland.com’s fictional Derek Jeter Diary, The Captain’s Log.

I was also very lucky and missed the FRS’s “all-star” pitcher John Lester give up a single and two doubles, allowing two runs in his 2nd inning appearance.

The Purple Whale swam past the 44,000 mile mark on the way to DD this morning.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1391

43,000 Palm Trees

Somewhere north of Palm City, on the Florida Turnpike, but not as far north as Palm Bay and nowhere near as far north as Palm Coast this morning, the Emperor passed through the 43,000 mile mark.

We went back down to Florida for the second weekend in a row so I could help BIL Paul empty all he and Sandy’s personal belongings off their boat, as they have decided to sell it. You wouldn’t think there could be that much stuff on on a 37′ boat, but because they could actually live aboard the thing, it was basically a second household.

Last week we drove the Miata down, but this week we had to take the Purple Whale as it did nothing but whine all week about how come we took the Emperor to Disneyland, but not him. I told the mauve mammal of the sea that we didn’t go to Disneyland last week and weren’t going this week, but if he wanted, we would take him to the same place we took HRH. So that’s what we did and now he is even madder at us because not only did we not go to Mouseville, we didn’t stop at Marineland to see his relatives..

42,000 Bits Of Metal

Metal Dragon

Day One: Aiken, SC to Robbinsville, NC. – 305.9 miles*
This dragon, that is made up of about 42,000 metal pieces and vehicle parts, sits right outside a relatively new souvenir stand that has popped up just across the street from the original, more motorcycle oriented, souvenir place, at the junction of NC28 & US129 near the start of The Tail of the Dragon.

As I guessed Thursday, by washing the car then, I pretty much guaranteed that the 30% chance of rain we were traveling through today, would 100% fall on us. We had to put the top up just about the time the roads started to get all bent and crooked when it is the most fun to have it down, but it was no real disappointment as it was not raining hard enough to make us put the windows up at all times, so we still got to enjoy the cool mountain air and dulcet tones of exhausting waste gases of burnt gasoline.

The sun did come out long enough after dinner here in Robbinsville to allow a quick run up to the beginning of Deals Gap to capture the Welcome to Tennessee and Welcome to North Carolina signs. As a bonus we also snapped a photo of the Swain (NC) County sign that was steps away from the state sign. This brought our total Moss Motoring points for the day to 10 with the 1 other county, 3 cities, a National Forest, a waterfall and the above photo which will be used for one of this quarter’s Bonus Points.

We drove the Sonata to work on Friday and when I got behind the wheel I realized that the odometer read 42006. Because we had been driving the Emperor to and from the Valve Store(tm) the rest of the week, I couldn’t recall on which day those six miles occurred, oh well, let’s call the 7th of May as the date the Purple Whale ran past the 42,000 mile mark.

*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 239 (-66.9) – Total miles so far: 305.9

Started down, went up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1331