Both Stone Guards are in. Not bad, nobody is going to notice them though. During the day the barndoors are down. At night the lights are on only when you drive and you don't notice the mesh from further away than 5 feet. They are for me, I know they are there and I think they add just a bit more whimsy to the front of the car.

The rubber flaps were impossible to trim while in the car, so I had to take them out to cut them. I had to use some tin snips as the rubber is about 1/8 thick. I cut a nice little curve in each one to clear the shape of the mesh. Trouble was they were held in by some expandable plastic tabs and you couldn't get to the bottom of them to compress the tabs, so had to snip them out figuring it shouldn't be to hard to find them. (I hope I'm not wrong, Advance Auto didn't have the right size.) You'll just have to wait until next week on pictures as we are off on a weeks vacation starting right after work tomorrow.

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Box from J.C. Whitney showed up today. Woohoo, right parts this time. Of course they charged my charge card for the return shipping. I called customer service and and after a 5 minute wait, the nice lady was appologetic and said they would reimburse my card. Wasn't until I hung up and looked at the invoice that it dawned on my that it looks liked they charged my card for the item again too. I'll just call tomorrow and see what has happened. Maybe I'll just start with my credit card company....

Got one of the stone guards on. Looks kinda cool in a weird way. They are slightly convex so I think I hear it scraping these little rubber rain flaps as the barndoors go up and down. Not the end of the world, but proabaly not good for the pop-up motors or the stone gaurds in the long run. Will finish the project tomorrow night by mounting the other one and then seeing about trimming or removing the rubber piece.

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Up at work and down for the ride to the haircut and home. Only it started to rain, so I put it up as we were coming to a red light. The rest of the cycles came when we went out to try and take a picture for the Club newsletter, Donna and I are the Member of the Month for September. See the photo here: The Driver.

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Put it up at work because of the predicted rain (we didn't get any.) After work we just left it up to luxuriate in the AC.

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Atypical Sunday for the Miata today. First and weirdest was Donna drove to get some fresh bagels for breakfast and actually requested I put the top down for her. Donna doesn't drive that much, she says that's the only reason she keeps me around, and when she does she will drive her mom's Civic first (the Civic was sitting right there.) Second, if she has to drive the Miata, she always wants the top up. Then we went grocery shopping in the Miata. Usually Donna and her mom go shopping in the Honda, but today Mom didn't want to go, so we went. Donna asked, "Did we want to take the Civic?" I replied, "Only if you are driving." I think she was worried about running out of room in the trunk (I guess she forgot the 11 years we used to go shopping when we only had a Miata to do it with.) $100 worth in 9 plastic grocery bags, a big bottle of laundry detergent, the boot and the cockpit cover fit in with enough room left for her to toss her purse in there too.

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Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 217

Put the top up so I could wash the car in preparation for this afternoon's Sno-Cap 38th Anniversary Cruise In. Meeting the Miata Club again today. The Sno-Cap has been an institution in North Augusta for, like well duh, 38 years. Each year they hold a party with a DJ, high school cheerleaders, games, contests and door prize give-aways. They invite all the local car clubs to come between certain hours and hang out. Free soft drinks if you wear your Club T-shirt. This year, like last, we were going to share the lot with the Corvette Club. They must have forgot or something as there were only 3 Vettes in attendance. We had 12 Miatas. Coincidentally that is the exact number of covered spots the Sno-Cap has. We filled them right up.

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Down for the trip to work, but up for the trip back home. It went back down for tonight's Master's Miata Club Full Moon Rally. We had 10 Miatas and a convertible RX-7 that belongs to a member's sister and brother-in-law. Nice little ride thru the back woods of Aiken County before ending up at Brusters for icre cream.

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Didn't fool around today, just put it up while at work and left it up for the ride home. Tomorrow will be the same as it is supposed to be in the upper 90's.

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The streak is over at 10 days and all because I panicked. Had a doctor's appointment this afternoon and he was wrapping up the visit I could hear the thunder outside. After redressing I hurried outside to put the top up, even before the nurse had finished my paperwork. Looked pretty bad in a couple of directions. After coming back form the office a second time, I headed home and didn't encounter a single rain drop.

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Almost broke the top down streak today. After work we went over to Hitchcock and did a little work-out on some machines. After we were done we just hopped in the car to come home and it was HOT (96 on the bank sign.) Instead I just turned on the AC high at stop lights, but it was close to flipping it up for some shade.

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Typical Miata Monday - To and from work with the top down. Did make a post office run at lunch to mail my CD Mix of the Month Club though. Man that noon day sun was hot.

The package from J.C. Whitney arrived today. The chuckleheads shipped the wrong thing. Invoice said the right thing, but there was a window tinting stip in there instead of my chrome headlight stone gaurds. Now I've got probably another month before I get a 2nd try at getting them.

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Typical Miata Sunday - it is sitting in the garage. We had one little errand left to run today and we udes the MSV because it was the middle of the afternoon and we took Mom along for the ride.

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Didn't make the post office so the mix will get mailed on the deadline date of Monday, sigh. Speaking of post office, they delivered my J. C. Whitney package today, at work, it should be waiting for me on Monday.

The evening was spent on a drive to finalize the route for this coming Friday's full moon rally with the Miata Club. Got it down to 47 from 60 making it a 10 minutes shorter ride. Hopefully it won't rain. It hasn't all this week, as you can tell from the top transition count being stuck at the same number.

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Still no J.C. Whitney delivery - the package was coming from the same area (midwest US), was lighter and they charged $10 vs. zero and it ain't here. No wonder UPS is kicking the USPS's butt. Actually got my CD Mix of the Month done today. I waited until the last day to sign up and thought I would end up mailing on the deadline date too, but it looks like I'll send them out tomorrow, 2 days early. Can't really gloat though, as I have yet to post the track listing from last month's mix...

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Got the DVD player this morning and spent most of the evening hooking it up. Wouldn't have taken that long, but I took this opportunity to clean up the snakes nest of wiring and patch cable behind the entertainment center. Cool thing about the player is that if you put a DVD in it, the TV automatically turns on and switches to the correct video input. Think I'll put off the next couple of Miata mods and buy a JVC receiver and VCR to complete the package, this compulink thing is coool.

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Another to and from work drive day for the Miata, the only thing different were the routes. We like to mix it up and drive a slightly different way to work each day of the week. Try it you'll like it. The best one to do first, if you have a set route you take to work every day, is to as you are about to make the last turn, don't take it. Go on up to the next street and come back to the work parking lot from a different direction. Even if it is a 1/4 mile further along, the feeling of freedom generated by "driving past" where you normally turn will be worth it.

Called Serious Auto up and asked if they had got my order. They had, they just hadn't changed the tracking stuff because they couldn't yet. The spark plug wires are on back order, so no UPS yet. The mats will be drop shipped right from the manufacturer, so no tracking number will be available.

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Drove to work, drove home, that's it. My chrome rock guards for the pop up lights were shipped from J.C. Witney, $7.95 (with $9.95 more for shipping.) Track them here. Serious Auto hasn't updated their database or they haven't processed my order for the mats yet, as their online tracking still shows that my last order was delivered on July 15th. But I can track my non-Miata shipment from Best Buy here - a new DVD player.

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Well it wasn't exactly crowded out there, but when you are used to only seeing a dozen cars total on the 10 mile trip, 30 or so seems like a lot. Almost all of them on the one road that goes by the entrance to a middle school.

One thing happened to make up for the downer traffic though, we were barreling down a back road and noticed a half dozen kids just standing around or sitting on their book bags waiting for the school bus. As we got closer one little girl about 8 or 9 notices us coming, she jumps up shouting and pointing, "That car's got teeth on it! That car's got teeth on it!" All the other heads turn our way, a couple of quick toots on the air horns and everybody's, kids and car occupants, morning just got a little brighter.

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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 tempuratures 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.

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Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 205

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 grey. 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.

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Repeat of yesterday (weather-wise.) Tonight we made our first attempt at a route for the Full Moon Rally we're leading the Miata Club on in 2 weeks. 58 miles with an elapsed time of 1:15. Not bad, we are going to try and cut out some miles so we can trim the time back closer to an hour though. If we can't feasibly shorten it, no big deal, we’ll stick with option.

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Cool morning and hot afternoon, but not too hot. Actually it is supposed to be nice like this for the next few days, 60's at night and *just* around 90 during the day. Weird to be calling 90 nice, but when it is in the upper 90's with heat indexs in the triple digits....

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Nice day, the top stayed down all day. Temp was around 90 and the humidity must have been real low as I left the top down for my lunchtime errand. Even on the way home it was OK.

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The radar looked bad about 3:15, so I went out to put the top up. It was sprinkling at the time and I got mildly wet for the effort. The cockpit cover would have protected the interior just fine, but the top would have gone up at the end of the work day anyway as the tempurature was 96 with a heat index of 106....

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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.

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Sunday, August 4

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.

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Saturday, August 3

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 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.

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Friday, August 2

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.

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Kept the top up during the day because there was a higher probabilty of rain than yesterday. I didn't notice, but it did rain during the afternoon sometime because there were water droplets on the hood and trunk when we went home at 4:30. Ironically the cockpit cover would have protected the interior today.

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