(first posted 7/24/2016) My wife TIP (The Irish Princess) poured forth to the marriage counselor dude we were seeing her litany of complaints about her boring husband: “All he does is buy plain, dull, four-door cars. He never gets anything fun-like. It’s like he’s always depressed.”
“Are you depressed?” the counselor dude asked.
“I don’t think so; how would I know?” I answered, “If I was depressed all the time, how would I know what it felt like to not be depressed?”
I thought that was a reasonable answer, but TIP rolled her eyes with a see-what-I-mean gesture.
Actually I felt fine (aside from steadily increasing stomach pains, and I was pretty sure I knew where they were coming from) but I elected to keep my mouth shut.
TIP and counselor dude agreed it might be good for us to look at some fun cars.
I was up to my ears in alligators in late 1998 as an employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) doing Y2K prep work for my customers at the NYC Department of Correction (DOC), but I assured TIP that as soon as I came up for some air, I would get right on this new marital task.
But (and I already knew this), TIP was not one to wait.
In the late 1990s there was a world wide fear that come midnight December 31 1999, every computer program working with six digit dates, or with 8 digit dates but bad code, would go berserk, break down, or set your bank account balances to what they might have been in January 1, 1900, meaning zero.
People feared that on Y2K airliners would fall out of the sky, railroad engines would speed up and ignore signals, nuclear missiles would stop receiving “All-OK” messages and go into auto-launch mode, and time set coffee makers would brew too soon and burn your morning cuppa joe. Or worse, not brew at all.
While some experts tried to calm people with assurances that all would be fine, there was genuine fear of what might happen after midnight December 31, 1999. People were afraid that the civilized world would be thrown into a Cormac McCarthy-like dystopia leading to chaos and anarchy, or what the Billy Bob Thornton character in the 1998 movie Armageddon described as “…basically the worst parts of the Bible.”
I can joke about it now, but back then the fear was genuine, and those flames of fear were fanned by dooms-day profiteers, survivalists, and by a steady stream of excited radio and TV news channel anchors and talking head experts.
Gun sales went up.
So my cozy little crew of 6 people wiring Rikers Island with fiber and cat-5 cable and putting new networking devices into DOC office facilities and jails had to quickly double in size in order to help the DOC comply with Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s directive to all New York City agencies to exhaustively test for millennial bugs in all computer systems.
We had to hire new people (competing against lots of other organizations), train them, design testing scenarios, get the needed additional testing hardware and networking gear, and then get that equipment up and running, and then test, test, test, and then document the tests for the Mayor’s reviewers.
Not everyone we hired was up to the job, so we had to do some firing, more hiring, and then start the training anew.
Two of the persons we had to fire threatened my sales rep Jack and me with physical violence; these were the kind of people we were dealing with during that crazy time. I started using different subway lines between the DOC and DEC’s mid-town offices to avoid a conflict.
It was also a lot of work to procure the needed NYC purchase orders to fund these unplanned for expenses. While the panic was real, NYC procurement policies were as slow and as wrapped in red tape as ever.
I was leaving for work at 5:15 A.M. every day and getting home long after Will and TIP had eaten dinner.
I developed an ulcer. Sometimes it was just a dull ache; other times I curled up on the floor of my 2 Penn Plaza cubicle in NYC and waited the pain out. I drank big bottles of pepto bismol and chewed extra strength antacids like they were Necco wafers.
That pink stuff worked rather quickly, but the benefits did not last long.
My doctor told me ulcers were becoming an epidemic in his and other practices. If companies were not laying people off, they were making people work 14 hours days, and then there was still the threat of layoffs if the company had even one bad quarter. He prescribed some ulcer medications but admitted my OTC efforts were probably as good as any, despite the overuse.
The last thing on my mind was a fun car. If I was no fun before all this Y2K business started, I was even less fun after.
What happened to that simpler life I was looking forward to in 1982? Well let’s see, marriage, child, suburban home, mortgage, car(s), lawn mower, leaf blower, three bathrooms, another lawn mower, flooding basement, long commutes, and oh yes, Y2K. It all sneaked up on me little by little.
About one week after TIP and counselor dude determined I needed to lighten up a bit, TIP greeted me as I came through the door at the end of a day’s work: “I found the perfect car; it was in the show room; they’re moving it out for us to test drive.”
TIP was acting happy and excited but I saw an edge in her eyes that warned me not to say “I’m too busy, or too tired, or too much in pain.” This was our marriage that was being tested and I was trying not to fail. Again.
She continued: “You always said you liked the Miata, that it was good old fashioned sports car driving without the old fashioned sports car. Right?”
“Right!” I answered.
She was, indeed, right.
Beside, we all know that Miata means: Miata Is Always The Answer.
From the time my 14 year old eyes peeked through the honey suckle property border of my parent’s home and first saw a neighbor working on his new bug-eye Sprite, I have always admired that little roadster from afar, and of course any other little roadster like it.
There was an open air purity and motoring minimalism about these little bug-eyed roadsters that appealed to me.
Not that I wasn’t also in love with every other type of car on the planet; big, bigger, even the biggest 1958 over-chromed Oldsmobile 98 hardtop and the smooth spaceship sleek Citroen DS. It’s just that I also loved the smallest little roadsters as well.
Car-wise, I was easy to please and eager to be pleased.
I suspect I would not fit well into those Sprites; actually I haven’t yet had the chance to find out.
But a few years later there was an even more, less innocent object of sports cars affection, that gave me the inviting “come here” finger wiggle.
“The Avengers” became popular on American TV and steamy British actress Diana Rigg now played the character Mrs. Emma Peel. I didn’t know too much then about her right hand drive sports car, but the combination of the jump suited Emma Peel and the (as I now know it to be) Lotus Elan was, er, very interesting.
And TIP was right, the Miata was well known for looking and sounding just like a good old fashioned British sports car but with modern day Japanese quality and conveniences. And the original NA Miata looked a lot like the offspring from a marriage between a Lotus Elan and a bug eye Sprite.
The Miata TIP found was silver over black. It had a 5 speed manual, A/C, power windows, power steering, and new for the NB 1999 model year, a glass rear window with defroster. It was a basic model with no Torsen differential, no leather, no headrest speakers, and no cassette tape deck.
Actually, the available Torsen would have been nice. Miatas with the Torsen differential and four winter tires do quite well in the snow as long as it is not too deep.
It also had a plain, simple, thin metal key.
At first I thought the Miata might be a tight fit for me (6′, 1″ 33/4″ inseam) but on the test drive with the seat all the way back I had to stretch my left foot to floor the clutch, so actually, I fit in it pretty well.
Two days later I drove it home. The above photo was at the marital abode a short while after we bought the car.
TIP took a few manual transmission driving lessons with a local driving school and was soon roaring around town with the top down and her long blond hair blowing in the wind.
She got a lot of attention.
Oddly enough, 9 year old William did not want to be seen in the Miata, especially if the top was down. He seemed embarrassed by the car, or by me, or by me and the car, or maybe he just wanted to be under the radar, not noticed, and not seen. Not sure why.
Some specifications: The engine is a DOHC, 4 valves per cylinder 112 cu. in inline 4 with EFI and a cast-iron block and an aluminum head. It develops 140 horsepower at 6,500 rpm, 119 lb. ft. of torque at 5,500 rpm, and has a 7,000 rpm red line.
It weighs about 2,300 pounds, has a 50/50 weight distribution, an externally vented absorbed glass mat battery in the trunk, and 15 inch wheels. The consensus of web sites say 0-60 comes in 8.0 to 8.5 seconds. Even the latter rating is plenty fast enough for me.
Note-1: There was no 1998 Miata. The last NA was the 1997 model year; the NB (second) series came out in March 1998 as a 1999 model. Model years 1999 and 2000 were designated as NB1; model years 2001-2004 were called NB2.
Note-2: NB1 models employed something called VICS (variable intake charge system). As I understand it the intake manifold had two sets of runners; long narrow ones for regular driving around town and short wide runners for high RPM operation. To meet increasing emission requirements NB2s employed VVT (variable valve technology) which was Mazda’s more modest version of what Honda called VTEC. NB2s also had different (maybe better) headlights and a revised interior.
Over the years I’ve left the Miata 100% stock, even the air box, but have done little things often described on Miata web sites or narrated to me by my anal retentive obsessive mind careful attention to details.
The black rubber molding just behind engine on top of the gray bulkhead that separates the engine room from the windshield and wiper area is a hollow rubber tube that has flattened down over the past years. I threaded some round window insulation through it to plump it up a bit and do a better job of keeping engine heat out of the wiper area.
I noticed that there seemed to be a little heat coming from the vents even when the heater rotary dial was all the way off. The web site remedy was to attach a pull cord to the heater lever and route it through the glove box. Giving it a gentle pull while turning the heater dial to cold would pull it all the way closed. In the above photo you can see the nubby end of a white cable tie routed through the end of the metal heater control lever.
After putting the glove box back in, the end of the cable tie is clearly visible and easy to tug when I want no heat coming through the vents.
The cable for the front hood release brushed the tip of my left foot when I was going to or from the clutch pedal. Another cable tie tightened around that hood release cable and the dash frame above it remedied the situation.
NB1 Miata center console covers only have one hinge plus a flat strip of thin plastic that flexes as the console cover is opened and closed. Of course, if one keeps the garage door opener there and open and close that cover a lot, the flat plastic part of the “hinge” breaks.
For $2.29 I bought a set of small brass hinges with screws and installed one of them at the front of the console cover (upper left side of above photo). It now works just as it should. Also visible is the black electrical tape of a failed earlier effort.
The NB2 models fixed this issue with the center console cover.
The longer lever on the right of the above photo opens the trunk (4 times out of every 5); the shorter lever opens the door to the fuel filler (always).
As the NB top folds up and back just like convertibles in the old days, Mazda probably missed a detail in the way the inside of the top was not protected from the sun. There is a boot for the top but it is clumsy and fragile, so I do not use it much. As a result, the faded interior of the top is clearly apparent in the above photo. I can live with this.
The steering wheel is by Nardi. It feels just right.
Although the car’s mileage is only in the mid 30Ks (edit: more like 45K in 2022), it has been almost all local driving and the wear on the edges of the driver’s seat is showing. And during summers I do a lot of dirty and sweaty gardening and mowing work and find it helpful to use some of Will’s old black band T-shirts as an easily washable seat back cover. I see here even that old t-shirt is fading.
It has a usable 5.1 cubic foot trunk. The battery is on the right side under the mat and is easy and clean to change. A mini spare and jack are at center, also under the mat.
It is also getting harder and harder for me to exit the car gracefully without looking like a geezer who should have given up this mid-life-crisis mobile long ago and just bought that damn Buick.
But as I recently wrote in the 1978 280Z COAL, and can rewrite here as well, I always smile as I walk towards this Miata with its plain metal key in my hand. This is a nice feeling; I hope to hang onto the Miata as long as possible.
Back at work, the DOC passed its Y2K tests and we felt quite confident that things would go well as the deadline approached. DOC management requested that my entire team be present at both the 60 Hudson Street headquarters and at the Rikers Island MIS trailer for New Year’s Eve.
You can imagine how well that went over with the members of the team and their spouses.
TIP didn’t seem too upset.
So around 4 P.M. on Friday, December 31, 1999, I took a NJ Transit train into Hoboken surrounded by anxious-to-get-drunk teenagers and slightly older party people. At Hoboken, the teenagers and party people took one Path line to 33rd street where it was a short walk to Times Square.
I took the other Path line to the basement of the World Trade Center where it was a short walk to 60 Hudson Street.
As was my habit when using this route, I ran up the three or four flights of stairs next to the escalators from the Path tracks to the WTC concourse because it was good exercise. That was a lot of steps.
The atmosphere at the WTC and its neighborhood was sober and somber. It was only seven years earlier that terrorists had set off a bomb in the basement parking lot of the WTC and all of NYC knew the twin towers were a target on this significant and already scary New Year’s Eve.
The downtown part of the City that I walked through to go from the WTC to 60 Hudson Street was visibly on guard and had nervous vides. It felt surreal. There were dark sedans and SUVs parked and idling at all of the intersections around the WTC neighborhood with the shadowy figures of occupants barely visible through the tinted windows. Every NYPD officer was on duty that night along with many federal government law enforcement personnel.
There were numerous large tractor pulled trailers parked on side streets containing giant diesel generators that had thick black cables running up and into service ports of federal government, state government, and “critical service” buildings in that area. 60 Hudson Street was a “critical service” building.
The mood inside the DOC’s technical offices and computer room at 60 Hudson Street was as chilling as the street outside. No one smiled or joked. We were as prepared as we could possibly be, but we were also more nervous than we expected to be.
DOC management told us the local restaurants would be closing early that night so we ordered a bunch of pizzas and coffee and had to divvy up the costs because we, as Digital Equipment employees, were not allowed to buy New York City personnel any food or beverages. And vice versa. That was part of our explicitly worded contract with the City and the State; no exceptions were permitted. Never mess with NY State Contracts and Procurement rules.
At 11:30 we positioned ourselves in the noisy and cold computer rooms on Hudson Street and Rikers Island with fully charged flashlights and connected laptops and waited while we chewed on pizza slices cooled by the computer room’s frigid A/C. The coffee was cold too.
A few portable TVs with fuzzy reception were on and tuned to the Times Square celebration.
The count down started.
Then the date went from 19991231 to 20000101.
We waited. Again no one joked, or sounded relieved or even smiled. Armageddon might take a minute or two. Be patient.
The lights and the A/C stayed on and all of the computers and networking gear kept humming and blinking.
DEC team members and DOC personnel on Rikers Island started making test inmate calls using previously developed scripts. The network people at 60 Hudson and Rikers ran network tests and traces. Frank, the lead DEC programmer on the project queried the system about every minute or so and it kept coming back and saying “All-OK”.
We waited a half hour and then reran all of the Manhattan and Rikers tests. The inmate phone system and other DOC applications were all operating normally.
“All-OK“.
It wasn’t until 2 or 3 A.M. that DOC management, looking at our tests and confirming that all of the DOC office, jail, and inmate systems were up and running as designed, sat down with us and laid out extra oversight and service plans for the next few days, just to be sure.
We dodged that bullet. Either Y2K wasn’t the terror we feared, or we had fixed the problems before they became the problems we feared. And, terrorists hadn’t struck us.
Yet.
DEC, which had been under new management since 1992 when its founder Ken Olsen was replaced by an uncomfortably over groomed and dentally enhanced guy named Robert Palmer, was still having financial woes and once again informed field droids like me that company cars would not be renewed or replaced when their three year leases were up.
We, the customer facing personnel in the field trying to sell and deliver DEC services and products, were getting damn tired of our management’s obsession with eliminating, and then permitting, and then again eliminating what was generally considered to be part of our compensation package and a tool we used every day in our business efforts.
But even more frightening was the increasingly clear fact that DEC management was in over its head and was ineffectively flailing about trying to solve the company’s business problems. Management’s answers to DEC’s dropping fortunes were to cut all employee benefits, lay off some employees, and sell off corporate assets and businesses.
They were trying to fire and cut their way to success. I doubt that approach has ever worked in a modern technology corporation, other than giving stock prices a small and temporary bump.
I was still traveling to Rikers at least once or twice a week. I did make that trip in the Miata when I had to return the still well running and dependable 1996 Taurus sedan, but the trip was neither pleasant nor comfortable. Additionally, DOC uniform officers informed me that the use of a convertible on Rikers Island was not wise for obvious security reasons.
So once again we planned to get a new car for TIP and I would use her 1995 Eagle Vision for work.
Sound familiar?
TIP wanted a manual transmission car with pizzazz, not unlike the Eagle. That meant a powerful motor and leather seating.
Little did we know we were about to go from the Chrysler frying pan into the VW fire.
Already gone, and it’s “All-OK“.
Related reading (and a definition of the term “Niedermeyerization”):
The Miata is, like the Fiesta ST, a smile making machine.
Is good to see your marriage continued.
I remember the fear for the Y2K. Also that our Windows 95 PC started right up after the date change, mobiles still worked…
I remember the Y2K rubbish I was at a five day folk festival out of cell range untill the 2nd Jan but when we fired up the 78 VW Kombi and drove back to the world my cell phone worked again so all was well,
You are quite right. Charlatans posing as consultants to my Midwest U.S. regional bank were brought in to tell us that Ford Explorers with their clocks turned forward failed.
Um, no.
Powerful stuff.
I watched a man suffer ulcers at the hands of a bad marriage. It happens. Divorce, and it got a lot better.
Life stress can go crazy with the wrong person. My family got past the Northridge earthquake. My wife called me, scared, from California. I was home for lunch and had three televisions on like when LBJ was shitting his pants during Vietnam. We got her home. Technology changes.
911. Wife flew to Portland Oregon. Confusion with Portland Maine. I was working in my city’s most prominent office tower. She called, scared for me, I was clueless, NPR had nothing on my morning drive. The lobby was abuzz. An EVP mentioned Osama Bin Laden. I’d never heard of him. My wife got home days later after horrible flights and the shittiest last rental cars available. I recall driving home from work with my kids in the most subdued traffic ever. Gas lines forming. My ’99 Town and Country was topped off the night before. No room for more.
The headlines of the last several weeks have been hard. Flags in the US seem to be at half staff all the time.
On a more positive note, Diana Rigg. Wow!
“Peel Kicks!” #WoW
Dodged having an ulcer once. Got close, but had the good fortune of deciding to visit the doctor when the heartburn and constant burning reflux went on for more than a week.
The doctor then talked about the nasty bacteria that caused the whole mess, prescribed some medications and a new diet.
Bacteria, stress, skipping meals, poor diet, overeating and other things can lead to irritated stomach walls and if not caught on time… to ulcers.
I remember driving from Sunland to Valencia to the dealership I worked at the morning of the Northridge earthquake. Got on the 210 Freeway, went about a mile and had to stop and turn around and drive back the wrong direction because of lifted sections of roadway blocking my way. Traffic was light, few attempted to go to work on this morning. Took Foothill Blvd. to I-5/ San Fernando Road. The 14 overpass had collapsed onto the I- 5, there was a little Cal Trans service road that got me to San Fernando Road and I drove that into Valencia. Mobile home parks were on fire due to slipping off foundation blocks and breaking gas lines.
When I got to work only the general manager was there, along with one or 2 others. He was complaining about everyone staying home! In the parts department every bin was face down and parts were everywhere. A E30 325 that had been left on a service rack had the undercarriage smashed where the forks supported the car, from bouncing up and down on the rack. Ceiling tiles were laying on top of cars in the showroom.
The few of us who showed were sent home when it became clear to the manager we would not be opening on that day. Made it home using the same route which got me there.
The next day my Cal Trans shortcut was blocked off and I5 was closed. For the few days it took for a temporary detour to be cut into connecting the Old Road around the fallen 14 overpass and to repair I-5 it was a 2-3 or more hour drive each way, 8 hour work day and 4 or more hour round trip drive to go about 30 miles each direction! All I-5 traffic was routed over Foothill Blvd to San Fernando Road to the town of Santa Clarita where they took surface streets back to I5. What as mess.
Crazy time. Our rental house was OK, my 5th wheel trailer had jumped over the wood blocks blocking it’s tires and hopped and rolled about 10 feet down our driveway.
My memory of Y2K was picking up a 5kw generator (which I still have and has served me well over the past couple of decades) and Patti and I throwing the Apocalypse Party. Which meant inviting a bunch of the staff from Ducati Richmond out to our place (Bumpass, VA at that time) out with instructions to bring a minimum of one case of beer (or equivalent), enough food to feed us for a couple of days, a minimum of one firearm in their preferred calibre, and a minimum of 200 rounds of ammunition for said firearm.
One hell of a good party that night, and when the apocalypse didn’t happen (much to the disappointment of our pack of drunken idiots), we retired to the pistol range in the back yard at 0700 New Year’s morning and proceeded to blaze away. It definitely sounded like one hell of a firefight for the next two hours and there was a lot of brass cleanup afterwards.
Re: Diana Rigg and the Lotus Elan. I learned to pleasure myself to that combination. And I’d still love to own a Lotus.
When I went to work at Morgan Stanley in late 1999, my group replaced the Y2K team just as they were moving out of 750 7th Avenue. As I recall, they were quasi-retired people brought back to fix the problems created when they were current. My own team was there to build out the technology infrastructure of the new HQ-to-be going up across the street. As things would happen, Morgan Stanley never populated 745 7th Avenue. 9-11 happened, and then they sold the building to Lehman Brothers, who lost their office space in the WTC. I worked on that building for almost a year, but never once entered it after it was complete.
Errr… Are you still married to the TIP?
Y2K did not concern me on the automotive level, given that the only thing resembling a computer on my 66 Volvo 144S was my brains, and that has never been zeroed anyway. The actual night was spent in London when Tony Blair put a huge fireworks show.
Ah, yes, Y2K. I also had the privilege of working that night, driving a white ’97 Taurus around checking on various things. As the new year rang in, I was sitting in the empty parking lot of the Sonic in Jackson, Missouri, listening to “American Pie”.
Having watched the new year celebrations in Australia long before I left, it confirmed what I had long suspected about Y2K being a complete farce – at least in my world.
Plus, I have always had a sweet spot for Miatas, even being able to have driven one back in the late ’90s.
Mi Gawd, this author’s postings remind me of how fortunate I am to have remained unmarried all this time.
I dated several TIP’s over the past 30 years.
Ditto. And I’m gay. Straight people can have that marriage BS.
Thinking how the authors life seemed to parallel my own except for the money, good jobs, intelligence, sporty cars, and a couple other insignificant differences. But then I know I wouldn’t trade because the characteristics I see in both wives I got out of the way with just one. That is making an assumption based on the title, of course.
You are a good writer sir and if you don’t have your own blog you should consider it.
Another old bachelor here and yes indeed.
Miata is indeed the answer to many of life’s questions. I got mine out for an errand last evening at dusk, when it was stll 84 degrees F and humid. I have concluded that the Miata is the only way to make such weather even barely tolerable.
I am jealous of your glass window. Mine is the style which recommends unzipping and zipping the plastic window when lowering or raising the top. The aged vinyl has shrunk to the point that zipping that window in takes some real effort.
Ah yes, Y2k. I wondered if my 84 Oldsmobile would survive it. I was wishing for a time that I had kept the 68 Newport I had sold 3 years earlier. But as we all know, the Olds ran just as well in January of 2000 as it had in December of 1999.
…but we Mk1 owners do have the option of unzipping and folding down just the (larger) rear window for a good flow thru fresh air feeling without the folical disruption
I hope the reason Tip wasn’t too upset about you working new years eve didn’t have something to do with her having a boyfriend.
Geez I’ve been there, tooooo many times I found out later.
RL, you have persuaded me to remain single. A thrice-divorced (and brutally blunt) friend once told me that when it comes to vans, heavy machinery and women, it’s always smarter to rent by the day.
My Y2K preparations? I took $200 from the ATM,bought two bottles of Laphroaig, and removed from my humidor that Cuban cigar I’d been saving for the end of the world–ironically, a Partagas Lusitania. It was the only thing that went up in flames that night.
I wonder, too, if you kept the girl as well as the car. I’ve got positive vibes (but they are hardly reliable) because you posted that photo of her. There really is a perception of love in that photo.
But the story still has a decade and a half to run (Y2K…THAT long ago, that we now joke about it!) and I have the feeling that you’re saving it for us.
I remember Y2K, I would have been 11 on new years, but even at that age, at the crossroads of peak childhood imagination and preteen cynicism, I thought everyone was making a mountain out of a molehill, people were treating computers and networks as if they were woven into the fabric of the space time continuum, where in a literal Cinderella like scenario our cars turn into horse drawn buggies at the stroke of midnight, where our missile system will think we are fighting the boxer rebellion again!
My family didn’t do jack in preparation for it, we didn’t even have a home computer. Call me naive but I have faith that humanity even if our computer network did truly shit the bed, would take a month tops to get back on the rails in some form again, at least I find that more likely than the prolonged mad max scenarios preppers believe(yearn for) requiring fortification of their suburban tract homes.
Since you refer to the Miata in the present tense, I take it you still have it. We’re now within 16 years of the ending of your COAL series, so let’s enjoy it while it’s still running!
So, 2 successive wives thought you were a boring, unromantic workaholic. I’m not saying they were necessarily right, but you may have been attracted to the wrong type of woman. That’s sometimes been true of me.
I’m guessing the next car was a Passat.
I smell a 4the gen Jetta by looking at the interior picture he posted.
I’m wondering how you still have a MY 1999 Miata in rust prone New York City….
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My Son had a NA Miata , added a supercharger and went racing , it was always a fun car but my 6′ height is mostly in my trunk so the windshield header is dead center in my vision making Miatas un drivable for me .
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Super fun little cars ! I was sad when I had to decline it as a gift when he tired of it and moved on to the seriously faster Subarus .
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Our old junky when new Windows 95 computers at work all wnt fine , nary a hiccup although many employees showed their true colors by stealing every generator we had plus anything else they thought they’d need for the apocalypse .
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-Nate
Nice Miata! This is the generation I tend to look at when I consider buying another one. I re-read my own Miata COAL that you linked to right after reading yours and found that I miss the little thing. They just fit so good (I’m 6’1.5″ so the height is not an issue) and 100% of the performance is usable on pretty much every drive without looking like a total hoon.
This body style still looks very current today, it’s aged extremely well. I wish you many more happy years with it (also assuming it’s still in the current fleet).
I just wish that the time had stopped on beginning of tha century bkz after that the all the bad things started (911 two wars syria and more).second half of the last centry had been much less complicated.hoping to see some peacefull time before i die.
So why didn’t you ever go back to Honda? You loved your first accord and If TIP wanted a stick shift sedan that was fun to drive you had the accord v6 with a 5 speed back then. What could be better?
Maybe an Accord isn’t worthy of a princess?
I worked for a market research company in 1999 and they were really, really, really worried about Y2K. They not only had a lot of proprietary software, much of it written by people who probably didn’t have a clue what they were doing, they also had “adapted” some commercial programs to suit their needs. Needless to say they were concerned with what might happen on 1/31/1999 at midnight. I was drafted onto a team that was to try and test every conceivable permutation of the company’s software. I spent countless hours in a windowless, basement room doing this testing. We did actually find a few minor things that crashed on the rollover but nothing that would have stopped our operations.
Re Diana Rigg; I suspect that many men of a certain age (I’m 64) watched “The Avengers” mostly to see her. Ms. Rigg turned 78 last Wednesday (20 July) and, as far as I can tell, is still working as an actress; good for her.
I’m glad you are still enjoying your Miata. I just don’t fit into the cockpit of them well enough to operate the clutch with any kind of smoothness, and a Miata is for sure a car that doesn’t want an automatic.
One of my engineering buddies was electrical lead at a John Deere plant, he told me there was going to be few problems if any with Y2K. He rejected the high priced consultants and manually ran all the PLCs over Y2K on weekends ahead of time. He didn’t find any problems.
Nice that you still have the Miata, I always figured I’d have one by now but not yet. Maybe when we give up motorcycles. Whenever we see someone with a trike conversion or one of those Can Am froggy things we always shout “Get a Miata!”
I don’t get those Can-Am “half-snowmobile, half-motorcycle” things either. For what they cost, you COULD probably have a Miata. I wonder what people with real motorcycles think of them.
I think they have a place .
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I hope to never need one but a convertible will never replace a Motorcycle no matter how much you might wish .
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-Nate
I’m just amazed that Bombardier finally found a way to sell snowmobiles in the summer.
“… 9 year old William did not want to be seen in the Miata…He seemed embarrassed by the car, or by me, or by me and the car, or maybe he just wanted to be under the radar, not noticed, and not seen. Not sure why.”
Sounds like a case of early-onset adolescence to me.
Y2K was the nonissue it was because of guys like you and the stressing out you did for 2 or 3 years ahead of time – a bunch of people came out of retirement IIRC.
I’m reminded of the joke about the programmer who was tired of being bothered by requests to help with the Y2K problem, so he had himself put in suspended animation.
One day he woke up to see some people in futuristic costumes. One of them stepped forward and said, “Hello, I’m president of the world. We were looking at your resume, and we think you can help us with the Y10K problem ….”
I worked at a hospital and management were freaking out for months before Y2K, hyped up by consultants looking to make a killing out of fear. They stockpiled supplies, rented generators and even portapotties in case the sewage system failed. We in the IT department had a better perspective, upgrading some older equipment but not too concerned.
On new year’s eve the IT team were required to be at the hospital long with all the managers. By 4pm when the Universal Time (GMT)-indexed system clocks ticked over to Jan 1 with no issues I was pretty sure we wouldn’t have any problems, so it was basically a task of being visible letting management know we were monitoring things.
As I was walking through the departments the CEO asked me, all worried, to tell him straight what I though would happen at midnight and in a moment of candor I said probably nothing, the IT staff basically worked out months ago that the whole thing was a nothingburger; he was shocked as I don’t think he’d ever heard anything but fear and hype from his managers and consultants.
Anyway, midnight ticked over, nothing happened of course, so us IT guys finished a couple of bottles of adult beverages to celebrate both the new millenium and the end of Y2K BS, then slept over in some empty patient rooms.
Really enjoying this series, its becoming a part of Sunday night I look forward to.
Favourite line from this one….
“Armageddan might take a minute or two. Be patient.”
Gold.
I want a Miata, even though I AM currently driving a Buick.
Yours is an unfortunately too common and predictable story, thanks for filling in personal details. Thankfully, I suspect that you have a happy ending without the TIP and that YOU STILL HAVE THE MIATA with all of its reliable joys!! , and it is likely you don’t have ulcers anymore, and likely have a decent relationship with your son-I hope that for you both.
I know of a very similar, almost parallel, Y2K story and a similar, I suspect, spousal New Year’s story that had an ultimately definitive happy ending, with my life time childhood friend being unburdened of his princess without the loss of his treasured car.
Hopefully, if you then remarried, then you found peace and happiness, as my friend did, his third time luckily resulted in a really loving and delightful wife, in contrast to the prior two, whom I unfortunately had to know due to our friendship. If you didn’t remarry, it is likely that you are also ulcer free, happy, and enjoying the Miata with many joy filled drives and road adventures .
Bravo for sharing your story. Looking forward to the next installment, but thinking that I already know a variation of this story too well.
I continue to be impressed with your storytelling skills–looking forward to the next installment! And I remember all the Y2K hysteria all too well, but thankfully didn’t get stuck dealing with preparations (I was in college at the time so all that was really expected of me was reassuring paranoid people who called the help desk wehre I worked as a student.)
Never have even driven a Miata. I’ve got to fix that someday. Come to think of it, I’ve only driven two convertibles, period, neither one a proper sports roadster. (’99 SLK 230 and ’13 Camaro V6.)
Interesting story. I personally think that any woman that is referred to as a “Princess” in any context, is going to be a problem in a real life relationship. All this Disney princess stuff can’t be too good for the next generation of women, however I note that most animated princesses are now action heroes.
With the right woman marriage can be great. We’ve got 37 years together and things are still very good.
Oh, yeah…that. A few friends and I had some yuks and chuckles plotting a scheme to print up some official-looking fluorescent orange decals along the line of ⚠️DANGER! The ECM in this vehicle is not Y2K-compliant. DO NOT DRIVE THIS VEHICLE ON OR AFTER 12-31-99⚠️. Our idea was to apply them to rental and dealership cars, and maybe do up some variants for televisions, PCs, pencil sharpeners, refrigerators, etc. We never got around to actually doing it, but it was fun to think about.
On the actual night, I was at a party (ObRelevance: one of the hosts had an NA Miata). The jokers at the tuned-in TV channel put up 10 seconds of static just as the countdown reached zero. Har-har-har.
NB1s used the archaic (late ’60s) H4 bulb in a single ’70s-tech reflector. The NB2s got projector low beams and separate high beams with mid-’80s 9005-9006 bulbs, very effectively upgradeable to much more efficacious ’90s HIR1-HIR2 bulbs. The NB2 headlamps are enormously better; I still field questions on NB2-into-NB1 headlamp swaps often enough that I have the answer as a canned text file. People still do it, even though it involves buying headlamps; bulbs; a relay harness, and a front bumper fascia (unless one doesn’t care about a 1cm gap below the bottom of the NB2 headlamp in the NB1 fascia). Costly, but cost-effective.
Neat trick; works well—I’ve relied on it myself.
Points for this because it works without creating new problems, but I might have a hard time resisting the urge to try to make the control work all the way correctly—perhaps by installing a new anchor for the loop at the end of the bowden wire, slightly closer to the pivot of the heat control lever. For all I know, this would create new problems and fail to fix the original one.
I’m enjoying re-reading your COALs, RLP. You were a major inspiration for mine!
You remind me how much I miss my late NA. But I found that I was driving it less and less. I was not having trouble getting out, but Mrs JPC was and started becoming less and less interested in Miata-ing. It is still fun by yourself, but not as much. I am happy to see that yours is still zooming along.
Been a while since I’ve thought of Y2K. I too was working for the government at the time, just a local county one, but still plenty of paranoia, especially about the electronics running the doors in the jail. Everyone was on duty and working, not just on call. All went off without a hitch, except I got somewhat miffed because I had to work fixing some HVAC controls that had melted down the day before, unrelated to Y2K and everyone else sat around and ate pizza. Actually I’d rather work than sit around, but it gave me something to whine about.
Y2K was a nothing burger for me too. Had to hang around all night in spite of none of my new tech system being impacted in any way.
I’d love to drive a miata, but shoehorning one on immobilizes my legs and I look over the windshield. Nice car, just a trifle petite.
Those little Miata’s are quick little tykes. I spend the time in my Boss 302 chasing after their times at the autocross events. The Miata is very popular with the autocross crowd, kind of a scalpel where the Mustang is more like a battle axe.
I’m currently married and have 1 ex-wife and that covers that topic.
Y2K
I was working for the DOT in my state on the run up to Y2K. Panic about the vehicles, will they work come Jan 1st, we had 800 plow trucks and Jan 1 in snow country would not be a good time to lose your equipment. Manufacturers assured us that it was a non-issue. However that doesn’t satisfy everyone. The “you know I read on the Google that we could have a real problem here” crowd. Hard to ignore when these people are way above you on the company ladder. My reply was simple, “the manufacturers assured us that all will be fine. AND what can we do anyway, rewrite the code on every computer controlled vehicle?” A little grumbling because we don’t seem to be taking the problem seriously.
The main side affect we had eventually turned into a giant turd many years later.
We had a program for tracking the purchase of new equipment. Districts put in a request, we bought it and that was that. Request, ordered, received and paid, that’s it.
The equipment was added to our Equipment Maintenance System, when the vehicle entered service. There all maintenance was tracked until the piece of equipment was sold, wrecked, stolen or scrapped. Well this wasn’t good enough for Y2K. Time to get a new massive system that covers the vehicle, the budget, the parts, repairs and disposal of all equipment, OH, also ALL state agencies equipment too, not just the DOT. The big ball of red tape started rolling and gathering up everything in its path. The problem with this new system is they would occasionally do upgrades, new features, etc. About half the time the new upgrade caused something else to stop working, etc. Then a fix had to figured out and installed, usually 4-6 months later. One issue involved equipment related dates. There was a date for when equipment ordered, a date for when the equipment was delivered and a date for when the equipment was put in-service. Well one day I was putting a vehicle in service and when I added the date I noticed the other two dates changed to the date I just entered. So the system now shows The plow truck was ordered, delivered and put in service all on the same day. Bingo, bitching about how long it takes to get equipment has just been solved. Ah, No, time to open a new spread sheet and start tracking this manually until the problem is fixed. It only got worse from there.
Y2K did have a real effect somewhere. Tucked away at the bottom of New Zealand in a tiny town called Bluff is an aluminium smelter, placed to use the plentiful low cost hydro-power of NZ’s wet southern South Island. With smelters, it is critical to keep the smelting process going and the molten aluminium from ‘freezing’ solid. If this happens in an unplanned or random way it is very expensive to restart, as the solid metal has to be physically jack-hammered out of the crucible pots, (which often need replacing at this point, as they crack with the temperature change.)
New Zealand is positioned right next to the International Date Line, so it is the first country to greet each new day, and each new midnight. Consequently the first place in the world to see the Y2K changeover had this smelter in it.
At the changeover point, the software controlling the smelter stopped working, thus the smelter stopped working as it turned itself off, and the pots ‘froze’.
Worse, three hours later, at midnight local time in Tasmania, Australia, another smelter owned by the same company did exactly the same thing as Y2K rolled over.
This seemed to give the company enough warning to ‘fix’ the software and none of Rio Tinto’s smelters in the rest of the world were affected. But the cost of repairing the New Zealand and Tasmanian smelters put a huge dent in the year’s earnings.
So Y2K was a real threat somewhere, and somewhere connected to something you know in the USA. Ford’s alloy wheels back then were largely made in NZ.
A serious dent in the yearly earnings of Rio Tinto? My gracious goodness me, what a terrible, awful pity. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company.