Here's a few cool links about the history of the Miata in conjunction with the 25th anniversary with some short videos.
Mazda's Official Page
Jay Leno's Garage
And here's a shot of my Miata, just a few minutes after I bought it on October 30, 2011.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Happy Birthday, Miata
The Mazda Miata was first unveiled at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show in February of that year. This week Mazda celebrates the 25th birthday of the Miata and that unveiling. I love my second generation Miata and I'm looking forward to the anticipated 4th generation to be revealed in the next year.
Here's a few cool links about the history of the Miata in conjunction with the 25th anniversary with some short videos.
Mazda's Official Page
Jay Leno's Garage
And here's a shot of my Miata, just a few minutes after I bought it on October 30, 2011.
Here's a few cool links about the history of the Miata in conjunction with the 25th anniversary with some short videos.
Mazda's Official Page
Jay Leno's Garage
And here's a shot of my Miata, just a few minutes after I bought it on October 30, 2011.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Pre-Season Conditioning: 5 Mile Run and a Dozen Donuts
Making your car go faster has several basic components. One is to have more power. Another factor is to make your car lighter, and one part of that is making the driver weigh less. Brian and I have been working out a bit in an effort to reduce driver weight, but this weekend we took on a unique way to do that when we entered the Krispy Kreme Challenge.
For the past ten years, the Krispy Kreme Challenge in Raleigh NC has tried to answer this question, "Can I run 5 miles and eat 12 donuts in less than an hour?" My thinking is that the first caveman came up with this when he tried to eat as much meat as possible, and then try to outrun whatever wild animal was trying to eat him! In Raleigh though, the question apparenlty started with some North Carolina State University students, and after one thing led to another, we now have an annual tradition that this year found about 4,700 runners going for the challenge.
I figured I could run 5 miles in an hour, but didn't know about the 12 donuts. The way the run is organized, you have to eat them all at the halfway point, then get an official to confirm you ate them, and then they let you run the last half. I've done my share of training to eat all my life, so didn't really practice eating donuts quickly, and figured that on race day my pulse rate and stomach would tell me if my body could go for eating all 12.
Race day was chilly, with just a chance of rain, so we headed out and lined up for the run. One thing about running with thousands of people is that for the first mile or two you just can't run at a normal pace, since there are slower and faster paced runners all mixed together. Even so, Brian went ahead of me in the first mile and I decided to just keep a steady pace. This is a great excuse for any slow runner like me, and works well when combined with being twice as old.
I hit the donut station at about 22 minutes, so some quick math told me that I'd have 16 minutes to eat those donuts. Walking with my box of 12 sugar bombs, I started eating the first one by itself. As you might imagine, when you have to cook and lay out 36,000 donuts, they aren't going to be HOT NOW, so that takes away a bit of the magic of eating hot donuts. After the first donut, I continued walking through a mass of people who were all doing the same thing, or sitting on the street, or crowding around the water station. Funny how running a few miles and eating that sugary goodness makes you thirsty.
On my second donut I had to get more serious, so I smashed two together and took care of donuts 2-5. About this time I found Brian, and we both agreed that this was going to be tough, both in eating them all and with not really having more water. Or a cup of coffee. Or a way to wash the sugar off our hands. No matter, we were there to do our best, and continued eating, while at the same time calculating the running clock, the 2.5 miles to go, and that growing feeling of, well, something in the stomach.
I ate one more single, which got me up to 6, and decided that this was not going to be the day I ate 12 donuts. Brian kept going and finished 7 or 7 and a half, and then we agreed it was time to finish the run, and not worry so much about the dozen donuts.
The route back to the start was a bit hilly up and down, and I enjoyed the down hill sections a lot more. But somewhere on the way back, with 6 donuts added to my weight, well, I guess the physics just didn't work, and I finished in 1 hour, 2 minutes, and about 38 seconds. Without standing around eating the 5 miles would have been way under an hour, and without the running, well, I still couldn't eat 12 donuts.
Brian finished just a few seconds over the one hour, so he takes first place for Nixon Motor Sports in the running and donut eating contest. The Krispy Kreme Challenge folks donated a check for $200,000 to Children's Hospital, so in the long run, it was good to know that the hospital was the winner.
You can read all about this event at their website:
Krispy Kreme Challenge
For the past ten years, the Krispy Kreme Challenge in Raleigh NC has tried to answer this question, "Can I run 5 miles and eat 12 donuts in less than an hour?" My thinking is that the first caveman came up with this when he tried to eat as much meat as possible, and then try to outrun whatever wild animal was trying to eat him! In Raleigh though, the question apparenlty started with some North Carolina State University students, and after one thing led to another, we now have an annual tradition that this year found about 4,700 runners going for the challenge.
I figured I could run 5 miles in an hour, but didn't know about the 12 donuts. The way the run is organized, you have to eat them all at the halfway point, then get an official to confirm you ate them, and then they let you run the last half. I've done my share of training to eat all my life, so didn't really practice eating donuts quickly, and figured that on race day my pulse rate and stomach would tell me if my body could go for eating all 12.
Race day was chilly, with just a chance of rain, so we headed out and lined up for the run. One thing about running with thousands of people is that for the first mile or two you just can't run at a normal pace, since there are slower and faster paced runners all mixed together. Even so, Brian went ahead of me in the first mile and I decided to just keep a steady pace. This is a great excuse for any slow runner like me, and works well when combined with being twice as old.
I hit the donut station at about 22 minutes, so some quick math told me that I'd have 16 minutes to eat those donuts. Walking with my box of 12 sugar bombs, I started eating the first one by itself. As you might imagine, when you have to cook and lay out 36,000 donuts, they aren't going to be HOT NOW, so that takes away a bit of the magic of eating hot donuts. After the first donut, I continued walking through a mass of people who were all doing the same thing, or sitting on the street, or crowding around the water station. Funny how running a few miles and eating that sugary goodness makes you thirsty.
On my second donut I had to get more serious, so I smashed two together and took care of donuts 2-5. About this time I found Brian, and we both agreed that this was going to be tough, both in eating them all and with not really having more water. Or a cup of coffee. Or a way to wash the sugar off our hands. No matter, we were there to do our best, and continued eating, while at the same time calculating the running clock, the 2.5 miles to go, and that growing feeling of, well, something in the stomach.
I ate one more single, which got me up to 6, and decided that this was not going to be the day I ate 12 donuts. Brian kept going and finished 7 or 7 and a half, and then we agreed it was time to finish the run, and not worry so much about the dozen donuts.
The route back to the start was a bit hilly up and down, and I enjoyed the down hill sections a lot more. But somewhere on the way back, with 6 donuts added to my weight, well, I guess the physics just didn't work, and I finished in 1 hour, 2 minutes, and about 38 seconds. Without standing around eating the 5 miles would have been way under an hour, and without the running, well, I still couldn't eat 12 donuts.
Brian finished just a few seconds over the one hour, so he takes first place for Nixon Motor Sports in the running and donut eating contest. The Krispy Kreme Challenge folks donated a check for $200,000 to Children's Hospital, so in the long run, it was good to know that the hospital was the winner.
You can read all about this event at their website:
Krispy Kreme Challenge
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Super Bowl Car Commercials
Just watched Seattle wipe out Denver, so off the top of my head here are some thoughts on the many car commercials! But first, special bonus points to Denver, since Ford used to make a nice truck called the Bronco, but I don't think anyone has ever driven a Seahawk.
Early in the game there were two Ford Fusion commercials back to back. That was kind of neat, but in these two and then another one later that played twice, I think they hammered home the message that the Fusion gets good mileage. The way they said it though, "about twice" the mileage of all vehicles, sounded like it also included dump trucks and SUVs that get 6mpg instead of compared to just mid size cars, but I'll give them a pass on that one.
Also in the first half was probably the most unique commercial, which started with a small kid giving a kind of inspirational speech about growing up to overcome the bullies and bad guys in the world. No clue what this commercial was about at first, and then all of a sudden it was a Maserati Ghibli commercial. I liked that it was unexpected, and being a fan of Italian cars I knew that parent Fiat has set a goal to increase Maserati sales in the US, so this was probably a pretty good way to do it.
One ad that was well done and funny was for a KIA luxury car, the one that featured Morpheus from the movie "The Matrix". Like in the movie, he asked someone to make a choice between red or blue, and when the couple chose the red or KIA car key, all of a sudden they were driving down the road in a Matrix like scene, complete with Laurence Fishburn (Morpheus) in the back seat. That was funny enough, but then Morpheus starts singing "Nessun Dorma", so that put it over the top for me, best car ad of the Superbowl.
Various Chevy ads highlighted their trucks, their support of fighting cancer, and the one with the big Chevy truck hauling a livestock trailer with a bull that eventually we see is being taken to some cows "hello ladies", came close to being really funny, but just didn't tickle my funny bone like the KIA one did.
Late in the game there was a Jaguar commercial that didn't really tell us much about the cars, but it did try to make a connection between movie bad guys being British, and I guess that Jaguars are British cars. Maybe since it's the Superbowl you have to have some funny bits in your commercials, but based on the Jaguars that I have driven in the last year, they would have done better by somehow showing how great these cars really are on the road.
Volkswagen was back with a pretty good ad, just not as good as the Darth Vader commercial from a few years ago. In this ad, a dad explains to his daughter how cool it is that his VW just hit 100,000 miles, something any car person that remembers the clunkers of old as a good thing! The daughter doesn't get it, so the dad explains that it's like when any VW hits 100K miles, another VW engineer gets his wings. So of course we see various folks at a VW plant getting their wings, sometimes in funny situations. But the best line of the commercial then comes from the daughter who says something like "so when you hit 200,000 miles do rainbows come out their butt?". Not your normal car ad, that's for sure!
Another original commercial and funny, was from Audi. Audi? The German maker of the TT, and various other nice cars? Yep! To demonstrate that Audis are made with no compromise, this commercial played out a scene where a Doberman and a Chihuahua were crossed, so by the end we see Doberhuahua dogs running amok and terrorizing the world. Sounds silly, but it worked and ended up being funny. I'm not sure if everyone will remember it as an Audi commercial, but that's show biz!
Car Max, the used car guys had a good ad also, the one where the buyer drives away in his Car Max purchase, and all the way home he gets the slow clap from everyone along the way. OK, maybe it was just a little bit funny.
A Toyota Highlander ad featured a guy who stopped to help a broken down hippie bus, and it turns out to be Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the band from the old Muppet Show! I liked it, but there might be a lot of folks that aren't into the Muppets. Apparently the Highlander is big enough for a lot of people, or Muppets, and drums and stuff. Or something.
Two Hyundai ads plugged the Elantra and the Genesis. The Elantra ad had the actor who plays one of the characters in "Big Bang Theory" (medium funny), and the Genesis ad eventually shows you the emergency automatic braking. Like their cars, these ads were not bad, and compared to the recent non-Superbowl ad from Toyota that actually claimed that the Camry was "fun to drive", I'll put Hyundai ahead of Toyota until they prove otherwise!
Late in the game there was a very simple ad with Bruce Willis just talking to us. He reminded us that people, friends and family are important, and he suggested that we hug the folks around us. And since Honda makes highly rated for safety cars, that Honda cares about us too! Nice simple commercial, with no special effects.
Last but not least, there was an ad for the Chrysler 200. It was mostly some guy talking about America being unique. That guy was Bob Dylan. I still don't know what to say about this, given that he's been such an iconic singer and songwriter, and I can' think of anything else he has endorsed or advertised for in all this time, give or take 50 years. This reminded me of the Clint Eastwood Chrysler ad. If you can afford Bob Dylan to plug your car, it probably cost a lot of money. In light of Chrysler now being owned by Fiat, well, yeah sure, only in America!
Early in the game there were two Ford Fusion commercials back to back. That was kind of neat, but in these two and then another one later that played twice, I think they hammered home the message that the Fusion gets good mileage. The way they said it though, "about twice" the mileage of all vehicles, sounded like it also included dump trucks and SUVs that get 6mpg instead of compared to just mid size cars, but I'll give them a pass on that one.
Also in the first half was probably the most unique commercial, which started with a small kid giving a kind of inspirational speech about growing up to overcome the bullies and bad guys in the world. No clue what this commercial was about at first, and then all of a sudden it was a Maserati Ghibli commercial. I liked that it was unexpected, and being a fan of Italian cars I knew that parent Fiat has set a goal to increase Maserati sales in the US, so this was probably a pretty good way to do it.
One ad that was well done and funny was for a KIA luxury car, the one that featured Morpheus from the movie "The Matrix". Like in the movie, he asked someone to make a choice between red or blue, and when the couple chose the red or KIA car key, all of a sudden they were driving down the road in a Matrix like scene, complete with Laurence Fishburn (Morpheus) in the back seat. That was funny enough, but then Morpheus starts singing "Nessun Dorma", so that put it over the top for me, best car ad of the Superbowl.
Various Chevy ads highlighted their trucks, their support of fighting cancer, and the one with the big Chevy truck hauling a livestock trailer with a bull that eventually we see is being taken to some cows "hello ladies", came close to being really funny, but just didn't tickle my funny bone like the KIA one did.
Late in the game there was a Jaguar commercial that didn't really tell us much about the cars, but it did try to make a connection between movie bad guys being British, and I guess that Jaguars are British cars. Maybe since it's the Superbowl you have to have some funny bits in your commercials, but based on the Jaguars that I have driven in the last year, they would have done better by somehow showing how great these cars really are on the road.
Volkswagen was back with a pretty good ad, just not as good as the Darth Vader commercial from a few years ago. In this ad, a dad explains to his daughter how cool it is that his VW just hit 100,000 miles, something any car person that remembers the clunkers of old as a good thing! The daughter doesn't get it, so the dad explains that it's like when any VW hits 100K miles, another VW engineer gets his wings. So of course we see various folks at a VW plant getting their wings, sometimes in funny situations. But the best line of the commercial then comes from the daughter who says something like "so when you hit 200,000 miles do rainbows come out their butt?". Not your normal car ad, that's for sure!
Another original commercial and funny, was from Audi. Audi? The German maker of the TT, and various other nice cars? Yep! To demonstrate that Audis are made with no compromise, this commercial played out a scene where a Doberman and a Chihuahua were crossed, so by the end we see Doberhuahua dogs running amok and terrorizing the world. Sounds silly, but it worked and ended up being funny. I'm not sure if everyone will remember it as an Audi commercial, but that's show biz!
Car Max, the used car guys had a good ad also, the one where the buyer drives away in his Car Max purchase, and all the way home he gets the slow clap from everyone along the way. OK, maybe it was just a little bit funny.
A Toyota Highlander ad featured a guy who stopped to help a broken down hippie bus, and it turns out to be Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the band from the old Muppet Show! I liked it, but there might be a lot of folks that aren't into the Muppets. Apparently the Highlander is big enough for a lot of people, or Muppets, and drums and stuff. Or something.
Two Hyundai ads plugged the Elantra and the Genesis. The Elantra ad had the actor who plays one of the characters in "Big Bang Theory" (medium funny), and the Genesis ad eventually shows you the emergency automatic braking. Like their cars, these ads were not bad, and compared to the recent non-Superbowl ad from Toyota that actually claimed that the Camry was "fun to drive", I'll put Hyundai ahead of Toyota until they prove otherwise!
Late in the game there was a very simple ad with Bruce Willis just talking to us. He reminded us that people, friends and family are important, and he suggested that we hug the folks around us. And since Honda makes highly rated for safety cars, that Honda cares about us too! Nice simple commercial, with no special effects.
Last but not least, there was an ad for the Chrysler 200. It was mostly some guy talking about America being unique. That guy was Bob Dylan. I still don't know what to say about this, given that he's been such an iconic singer and songwriter, and I can' think of anything else he has endorsed or advertised for in all this time, give or take 50 years. This reminded me of the Clint Eastwood Chrysler ad. If you can afford Bob Dylan to plug your car, it probably cost a lot of money. In light of Chrysler now being owned by Fiat, well, yeah sure, only in America!
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