Sonata Photos

New Aquarium

Today in the span of about 50 minutes the Purple Whale got his new aquarium enclosure. Three young guys showed up in a dually hauling a 40′ long trailer and made short work of it. It is 12 feet wide and 21 feet long and it’s amazing how much bigger it seems than the 10′ x 20′ tarp style it replaced.

You might remember that about a month ago the tarp was pierced by a small tree limb, so we opted to go for something a little stronger than vinyl infused cloth. On Sunday we pulled down the tarp, disassembled the mild steel tube frame and donated it to my neighbor for him to put over his boat. Surprising how empty it seemed on that side of the driveway with the tarp gone.

What was also surprising was when I looked up, I could really see where that branch fell from and what I saw was that it was just the end of a much larger diameter dead branch. Yikes! If something like that fell, 14 gauge mild steel wouldn’t offer any more protection than that tarp did. Gonna have to call a tree trimmer stat.

Plated

As I was parking the tandem in the garage when we got home from work today I could hear the slightly muted beep of the answering machine. It was salesman Jerry letting us know that the Sonata’s South Carolina license plate was in and we could come get it whenever we wanted. Well, we wanted it now, so we changed clothes and headed over to Augusta.

The above picture does not show spiffy new SC plate because it was taken last weekend at Tignall Cemetery somewhere in Georgia where we DNF’d a cache. I ran it through an infrared plugin and then added the car’s color back in.

Elder’s Mill Covered Bridge

While slowing down a bit getting ready to turn off GA15 to hunt the Tignall Cemetery Cache I spotted a sign on the right hand side of the road that said “Covered Bridge.” So we made a quick turn and headed to the bridge. We both wondered out loud if we might have been here before, because way back in our early years in South Carolina we did chase down some north Georgia covered bridges. When we got to the bridge it didn’t look familiar, so we had either never been here before or had and forgot it.

Elder’s Mill Covered Bridge is a few miles south of Watkinsville, GA in Oconee County. It is a single span town truss bridge that spans Rose Creek. It is 99 feet long and was built in 1897.

The bridge wasn’t very wide and as a precautionary measure the state had erected an arch made of steel I-beams a hundred feet or so off either end. They serve the purpose as those metal basket things at the airline check in counters for your carry on’s, if it fits inside you can take it on board. If your car can fit through the arch it can cross the bridge. Me, being still a little unsure of the cubic volume of space consumed by the Purple Whale, was a little worried passing through the I-beams. We drove across and I made a K-turn to go back over the bridge while Donna jumped out with camera in hand to capture the moment.

2 Much

We got up 2 early for a Sunday morning 2 drive a loop through Georgia today. We found 4 caches and DNF’d 2, but we made the most of that small amount of finds because by the time we were finished a little after 2:30 this afternoon we got to cross off 2 State Parks, 2 Counties and 2 DeLorme Pages of our Georgia Geocaching Challenges.

Big Brother

We took the day off from work today to run some errands, one of which was to go get the Sonata’s windows tinted. Because we were dropping it off and coming back later to get it, we had both cars on the move. Breakfast was at DD and as I looked back at the two cars parked in adjoining spots it really affirmed yesterday’s comment on the size of the Miata.

We killed the two hours while the Purple Whale got his sunglasses by doing a little local geocaching and we found 7 of 8.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1009

Ain’t No Miata

But it ain’t half bad. After a brief visit with my sister and her husband in Hendersonville (where the temperature was 48°) and eating at our favorite pizza place, West One, we headed west to do a little research for our fall Gap Trip with the Miata Club. When we got to Robbinsville it was 30 degrees warmer than H-ville. After reconnoitering a couple restaurants, eating dinner in one, and a couple of motels, we decided to take an evening drive in the mountains.

The Sonata handles pretty well for a big front wheel drive car, the 45 series tires help, but being an automatic transmission it isn’t nearly as responsive as the Miata in the twisties. We didn’t attempt Deal’s Gap proper, but did run up 129 to the Tail of the Dragon Store, head back south on 28 past Fontana Dam and then cut across 143 back into town. The Sonata has a slap stick shift lever that you can use to manually shift the 5 speed transmission, but its placement is too awkward for good functionality. But the SE version we bought has paddle shifters on the steering wheel, so I thought I would try using them on 129 when the road turns sharply uphill at the Fugitive Dam. It lasted maybe all of 3 minutes. Donna told me she wasn’t so distracted by my activation of the turn signals when down shifting, so much as the wipers swooshing by on the dry windshield when I hit the stalk instead of the paddle when attempting to shift up a gear. I think I’m going to need more practice at that…

Don’t be alarmed at the lack of atop count, I’ve decided to not add it to the bottom of the post when the Miata hasn’t been driven on that day.

Done Deal

This was a much more pleasant experience today than Monday evening. The only two negatives were a) something that I knew would happen and b) something I should have expected.

a) You know how they say that for every year a human ages, a dog ages seven, well car dealer time is just the inverse. When they tell you it will be just a minute, that maybe what it feels like for them, but in car buyer time it is seven minutes. When they tell you it will just take a few minutes, you think that means 5 to 10 minutes, it will actually take 35 minutes to a little more than an hour.

b) When the deal was made I said I will give you X dollars down and I want the payment to be X dollars a month. After you have signed on the dotted line of nearly as many pieces of paper as you do at a house closing, the last one is the actual loan agreement. And just like you agreed upon the payment is X dollars a month, but there are some numbers to the right of the decimal point. The digits are carefully calculated to be not too big to make it seem like they are trying to add a whole extra buck to the payment, but big enough to amount to something for the dealer. They took the page right out of Walmart’s playbook, the payment is $XXX.88

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1004