Saddest day of the year....

Yes, it is. Late this afternoon, the hardtop went on. 8;(

-- Larry

Reply to
pltrgyst
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Last Thursday was one of the best of the year, for me (Minneapolis). Spent it driving around the alphabet roads in SW Wisconsin with the top down, perfect weather. And off in the wilds of either Pierce or Buffalo county, what should there be but an identical black NA heading the other direction on the same great road. Traded waves. :)

miker

Reply to
miker

Well, this is not the saddest day yet, that will come in December when I have my left hip joint replaced. I have a good friend that has a Miata and he will come over and give "Bing" a drive to keep her alive and yes the hard top is on. I put it on in mid Oct. and remove it in April or May if the weather is nice. I just put on a new front air dam and it looks good. To my suprise, I thought I would give MACCO a chance to paint it and it came out very well. ($99 ) The owner wanted to use it as a shill to show off their $99 special on bumpers. The color match is very good and Garnet Red Mica is hard to match. SOO, some people have sadder days than outers.

Bruce Bing '03 LS

Reply to
BRUCE HASKIN

Small world, I live in Lakeland, FL.

This place is basically a furnace basically May through September, only more humid. However now it's just about perfect. Forecast for tomorrow:

TUESDAY LOW CLOUDS AND PATCHY FOG IN THE MORNING THEN PARTLY CLOUDY. HIGHS IN THE LOWER 80S. NORTH WINDS AROUND 5 MPH.

Reply to
Carbon

"pltrgyst" wrote

Isn't this a little early? Today was a pretty nice top-down day.

Reply to
Ken Lyons

The day before I put the hard top on was beautiful, too -- we took a run out to Annapolis and the eastern shore. But when you don't have a usable soft top on the car, and you want to use it frequently, you have to make some sacrifices...especially when you have three days of drizzle/rain like we had this week. 8;(

Besides, I've still got the motorcycle and the scooter. 8;)

-- Larry

Reply to
pltrgyst

You know when you post this kind of note you are going to get these kind of remarks! I live in the Charlotte area and don't even own a hardtop, as you never know when it will be in the 70's in December or January! This past week and this weekend we have been in the low 70's for highs, so nice top-down fall color days on the way home from work or just cruising. I hope the winter goes fast for you!

Tom - '04 MSM

Reply to
bipestuff
  • pltrgyst wrote in rec.autos.makers.mazda.miata:

Ah! I love my PRHT :) Perfect for those indian summer days.

Reply to
SINNER

Yes, I am not a big fan of the NC, but the PRHT is awesome. One area that the NA & NB can never compete in without extensive and expensive modification, and maybe not even then if you want it to look nice.

Some people have complained about the time that it takes to raise and lower the PRHT, a complaint which I laugh at.

The advantages of an always-ready hardtop compared to the many inherent disadvantages of using vinyl as a car roof makes it to where the PRHT could take a lot longer to operate than it does, and I would still want it.

Leave it to Mazda to take 16 years to finally improve the top design so that the top side stays up and there is no boot to ever deal with. They then offered the PRHT a year later, which made the ragtop improvement completely irrelevant to me.

Pat

Reply to
pws

Hey! I have an '04 MSM, my first Miata. It puts a smile on my face every time I drive it. Even when commuting to work.

I live in Central FL. My wife and I have been vacationing in NC the past couple of years, mostly around Asheville. The roads are a hell of a lot better where you live.

We drove the Tail of the Dragon last time. It was crowded and there were a lot of police. There are so many other roads in the area that are just as good, with zero traffic. We never bothered with it after that.

Reply to
Carbon

Get ready for a post about how the "Tail of the Dragon" seems like a straight highway compared to the fun roads out west.

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That looks about as straight as a road can get to me. ;-)

I consider the Tennessee & North Carolina border area to be one of the most appealing places that I have seen so far in this country.

Fun roads, nice people, beautiful scenery, not necessarily in that order. The scenery is not quite as nice in November as in the summertime, but there was almost no traffic to deal with, so it balanced pretty nicely.

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Asheville is on my top ten list as a city to live in or close to if I ever make it out of Texas. I plan to make it back again to visit in any case.

This Thanksgiving, however, it is time to finally see Hawaii, woo-hoo!

10 days of camping, swimming, and sitting around vegging out on the beach is just what the doctor prescribed. :-)

Pat

Reply to
pws

Not to disappoint you.... it is pretty tame and usually crowded.

Here's a much more interesting road:

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Reply to
XS11E

I found Deals Gap to be far from tame, as tame roads do not usually have multiple hairpin turns on them.

Also, I don't go there often enough to know what is is usually like as far as crowds. Where do you get your updated information on this pretty tame road that is more that halfway across the country from you?

I do highly doubt that it would make the other cool roads in the world less fun or interesting to drive.

Having the road located in Arizona doesn't help either. Even the Austin hill country looks prettier than that scrubby and arid area "near the edge of the national forest" that the Coronado Trail is passing through.

Deals Gap is about 100 times more aesthetically appealing than that area in Arizona, just imho, of course. ;-)

Pat

Reply to
pws

From having ridden it more than once.

Reply to
XS11E

We had this discussion about how you found Deal's Gap to be a massive disappoint long ago, and my response of a negative opinion to that based on my own experience. At least we both find it to be scenic.

Amazingly, someone found it to be worth chronicling......

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Just massively different tastes and a generation gap going on, no big deal. :-)

Pat

Reply to
pws

I haven't driven Deal's Gap, but I have driven many other roads in the Appalachians. They're nice, if you can catch them without traffic.

US191 is in a different league. Easterners tend to freak out over the sheer drops and lack of guardrails, not to mention the occasional lack of an entire lane that's fallen away into a canyon. Instead of 11 miles, the "good part" lasts about 50 miles--mostly in first and second gear--like a marathon autocross where missing a gate exacts a rather sterner penalty than a few seconds added to one's time. Given the stakes and the blindness of some turns, a measure of prudence is required.

It's *really* fun in the rain.

Reply to
Lanny Chambers

Hopefully it is not just the Easterners who tend freak out when the roadway falls away into a canyon. Having the roadway disappear is a big deal, as are plunges off of sheer cliff sides.

This sounds like an interesting road to drive. It also sounds like a foolhardy decision to do any kind of true high-spirited driving on it.

I really do not need to add the possibility of falling off a cliff side to increase my driving pleasure. Wondering if there will still be a roadway ahead doesn't sound like it will do it for me either.

Pat

Reply to
pws

I find that a measure of prudence is required on any public road, whether it has blind turns or not.

If someone is tearing it up at Deal's Gap, US191, or anywhere else and they crash alone, no big deal, they have made their decision and it only kills or injures the decision-maker.

The problem is that we share these roadways with others, so it becomes extremely irresponsible to haul ass on the same roads that they are on.

I know that I could not live with myself if my need for "attacking roads" took someone else out, and I am glad that it never happened before I quit driving like that, which was about 18 years ago when I was 20.

Pat

Reply to
pws

I found both the drive from Flagstaff to Sedona, Arizona (down Sedona canyon), and the "loop" through Copper Point, Eagle Harbor and Eagle River, Upper Michigan to be not only more fun, but more scenic as well. The drive in Michigan is a real roller coaster and some with lowered Miatae have complained of bottoming out. I had more trouble with getting airborne.The drive in Arizona has uphill hairpins with lots of banking (make sure all items are secure in the car as the first one I really laid into all non-secured items flew about) and the scenery is simply breathtaking.

We spent most of Deal's gap stuck behind a bunch of geriatric fat asses on Harleys, which were everywhere.

Jim

----- Original Message ----- From: "XS11E" Newsgroups: rec.autos.makers.mazda.miata Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 1:15 PM Subject: Re: Saddest day of the year....

Reply to
George Jetson

That's one of my favorites as well but I haven't done it in the Miata yet, only on bikes (last time was in the rain!)

miker

Reply to
miker

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