Anyway, I hope you all like it!

I’ve had my Miata for nearly 9 years and it is still as much fun to drive today as it was the day that I bought it. I am not quite into cars quite as much as I was when I bought it but I still get a smile on my face whenever I find myself on a nice twisty road or it’s a beautiful sunny day and I am just cruising along with the top down.

Over on the left there you will find my product reviews, installation instructions, galleries of Miata related stuff and stories about adventures I’ve gone on with my car. Down below will be my Miata blog of sorts. I kind of doubt that this will get updated much but if I come across something cool or interesting in the Miata world I’ll be sure to share it.

I hope you enjoy my site. If you have any questions of comments please feel free to leave a comment on of the pages, I check on my sites regularly so I should be able to get back to you quickly.

Cheers,
Moe

Click on any picture to enlarge.

If you have any interest in learning more about Photoshop, you should check out the Photoshop section of my my site.

ATTENTION

Due to excessive theft of these images I have disabled hotlinking on this page. I got really sick of seeing my work on other peoples pages costing me money in bandwidth and never giving me credit. Unfortunately the actions of few have ruined it for the rest of you. If you want to show these to someone or post a picture in a forum you can use the A-team picture or the Batman picture. This does not mean that you can use these pictures on your site or use them as an avatar on a forum, but if you want to show my page to some friends or share it on a forum you can link to those two images, otherwise just link people to my site. Thank you.

The Ateam	Austin Powers
Automan	M2 Bomber
Smokey and the Bandit	Batman
Bond…. James Bond	Boss Hogg
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang	Christine
C.H.I.P.S	Driving Ms. Daisy
Deathrace 2000	Double Decker
Bull Dozer	Dually
Dukes of Hazard	Truck
Fire Truck	Flintstones
Fast and the Furious	Back to the Future
Inspector Gadget	Ghostbusters
The Green Hornet	Hearse
Herbie	Hot Dog
Hovercraft	Ice Cream Truck
KITT	Limo
Lord of the Rings	Lowrider
The Road Warrior	Magnum P.I.
Miami Vice	Army Issue Miata
Monkees	Monster Truck
My dream hard top	NASCAR
Nash Bridges	Partridge Family
Pope Mobile	President
School Bus	Scooby Doo
Space Shuttle	Snoop Dogg
Snowmobile	NASA Edition
Speedbuggy	Speed Racer
SR-71	Starsky and Hutch
Star Wars	Superbird
Tank	Taxi
Titanic	Transformer
UPS	Vette
Wonder Womens Invisible Miata	Woody
Zoom Zoom Zamboni	Miata Money
Jurassic Miata	Columbo

The event is spread over three days. The first day (Friday) there is no driving. Everyone meets at the Elks Club where you get a dinner, then an instructor goes over track safety and technique. Then the best part of the evening, the prize giveaway. Unfortunately I did not win anything, but lots of Miata owners went home happy. Saturday morning was started off doing on-track exercises. We did three different exercises, threshold braking, slalom and apexing. Although the exercises themselves where helpful, the morning was rather hectic and unorganized and people ended up waiting in lines a lot and not getting much time to do the actual exercises. Some people didn’t even get to do some of the exercises at all. The second part of the day is track time. Since it was my first time on a track, I got started in the beginners group (where I belonged); we did a lot of time on the track following the instructors, watching and learning the racing line by example, and then the instructors would follow you and see how you were doing; this system worked out really well. As the day wore on the speeds increased and we got a little more freedom.

Sunday was pure track time (Miata heaven). For the first half of the day, I and another individual were constantly getting held up by others in our group so the instructors decided to move us up to the second skill group (nice little ego boost). I really enjoyed the move; I was no longer getting caught up behind traffic, but I also wasn’t getting passed all the time either.

Anyway I took a bunch of pictures of the track and some of the amazing Miatas that where there. If you ever have the chance to make this event, I highly suggest it, the Miata is absolutely amazing on the track. Enjoy the pictures, and if you should happen to see a picture of your Miata send me an email with the details of your car and I will add it to the page.

A nice turbo Miata with some low profile headlights.

An absolutely gorgeous 93LE Miata with a Greddy turbo; the owners of this car made sure to keep this car looking great all weekend with some waterless car wash. I wish I had thought of that.

Here is the interior of the 93LE Miata from above. This was the first 93LE that I had seen in person and I think I have to say that this is my favorite first generation Miata that Mazda ever produced.

A shot of the paddock showing just how many Miatas were there. And this pic doesn’t even come close to showing them all.

Here is a pic of my car showing the I/O port racing camera mount. This thing worked out wonderfully.

Another group shot.

My car is the second one and I think that’s 4score right in front of me. The BMW behind me was an instructor.

Another shot of me and my Miata about to go down the back straight.

Somebody coming up over the infamous turn five.

Another shot of a group coming over turn five.

And another.

A group coming in after a session; this was always my least favorite part of the day.

A striped M1 flying down the front straight.

One of the instructor’s S2000. This car sounded so amazing coming down the front straight. I really wanted to get a ride with him around the track; but whenever it came time for instructors to go out, this guy had a line of people wanting rides.

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To view the video just click on the image.

If the video does not stream well on your system and you are using windows; right click on the image and choose “Save Target As…” and save the video to your hard drive. For Mac users, buy a PC (just kidding… I don’t know what to do).

This is from the west side of Thunderhill.	This is from the east side of Thunderhill.
A Miata spins in front of me in this one.	More from the west side.
Wide open track.	On the tail of Mark Anderson AKA 4Score.
One of my better laps.	Following one of the instructors.
More from the west side.	A good clean run.
This is the full track at Thunderhill.	Following an instructors supercharged CRX.
More full track.	Full track again, this time behind a Datsun 510.
Full track.	Full track.
Full track.	Full track.
Full track.	My Miata shot from Martin Terpstra’s car.
More from Martin’s car.	And some some more from Martin’s car.

This car was quite a surprise. Your eyes aren’t deceiving, you that’s a Ford 302 stuck in a Miata. I was never on the track with him but people who were said that on the straights he quickly became a dot on the horizon. I’d love to get a chance to drive a V8 monster Miata.

One of the instructors brought this race-prepped Lotus; I was on the track in an instructor’s car while this car was out on the track, and man was it fast!

A very nice Miata which was extremely clean.

Look at how clean this engine compartment is!

A nice silver Miata owned by Rawson & Sarah Groves Hobart from Burlingame who were kind enough to email me and tell me about their car.

1999 PEP Miata (purchased in May of 1998), Eibach springs, Koni Sport shocks, Flyin’ Miata sway bars, BBS 16″ RK wheels, Toyo Proxes T1-S 215/40-16 tires, Big brake kit in front (Wilwood calipers, Powerslot rotors), Porterfield pads all around.

Another group shot, I really like the wheels on the white one.

Look how this owner routed his intake to the cool side of the engine compartment, nice header also.

mmmmmmmmmm Supercharger
This car belongs to Curtis Chin; here is a list of his mods.

• PBC hydraulic hood support
• Stainless steel brake and clutch lines
• Momo montecarlo steering wheel
• Momo superanatomic shifter knob
• Bilstein shocks w/ Eibach springs (love this combo)
• Shaved nose emblem
• Shaved emblems at rear panel
• Custom repaint – Porsche oceanic blue metallic ( did the prep,
  disassembly & body work myself)

• Hardtop
• Jackson header, high flow cat, & exhaust system (replaced the coffee
  can tip w/ a stock looking tip)

• 4 wheel alignment per Lanny Chambers specs (loved this mod !)

Right where my car belongs

Just fulfilling my narcissistic needs.

The Car: We took my car–a 2001 Mazda Miata, it is a base model with the suspension package with the basic power mods, Intake/Header/Exhaust. We were able to fit an amazing amount of stuff into the car. Two soft-sided bags, both of good size, a backpack, tent, two sleeping bags, two pillows, two camera bags, small toolbox, large cd carrying case, and some other little odds and ends. The car was an absolute joy on the road. We put over 8,600 miles on the car, and I was never really uncomfortable; the seats in the 2001 Miatas are remarkably comfortable. Gas mileage was between 26-31 miles per gallon. Once the car warmed up, the temperature gauge never budged–even in the desert with the A/C on. And the sport suspension was never tiresome either. Here is a picture of the trunk packed to its full capacity.

Day 1: Monday We left my house in Berkeley CA and headed up Highway 80; this took us up through Tahoe, Nevada and finally into Idaho. The area around Tahoe is really beautiful, but I didn’t shoot any pictures there since I had seen it so many times.

Going through Nevada was pretty boring, kind of a desolate state but the highways out there are like the autobahn. We could be cruising at near triple digits and be getting passed. We did see one humorous thing on the freeway there, apparently a cop had tried crossing the center divide to go after someone on the other side of the freeway and got high centered on his way across the freeway (sorry no picture of that).

We finally got through Nevada and into Idaho. We stopped at some local restaurant to grab some food, and we were both amazed at how much people were staring at us. Neither of us are very freakish looking. I have both my ears pierced and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and my friend is even more normal looking than I. Anyway, the food was good and we were on our way. We stopped to get some gas and that is where I shot the picture of the sunset that you see. And we finally ended up at our final destination for the day, Massacre Rock campground. Pleasant name isn’t it. I kept my friend up for the majority of the night with my snoring; and when I woke up, I found him sleeping outside on top of the picnic table at the campground.

Here are some pictures of the place that we camped; it was quite a pretty place.

Day 2: Tuesday We got a fairly early start (I tend to wake up early when I go camping), and we headed off to see the Tetons and Yellowstone. The Tetons were beautiful and quite magnificent. I almost lost my hat while driving along them; I asked my friend to grab the wheel while I was driving so I could shoot a picture. He did, so I leaned out of the car a bit to snap a pic, and WHOOSH there went my hat. Luckily there wasn’t any traffic coming the other direction so I quickly did a U-turn and grabbed my hat. I also got a wave from a red Miata who still had his hard top on. Below are the pics of the Tetons.

From there we entered the Teton National Park which leads you right into Yellowstone. This was one of the most beautiful drives of the whole trip. I will let the pictures speak for themselves here.

Finally we get into Yellowstone, and it sure is amazing. We saw a good portion of the park considering the time that we spent there (5-6 hours) We got to see some buffalo up close and personal (less than 10 feet from the car) and got to see some elk. We were driving around, and we came up to a whole bunch of traffic and a lot of people on the side of the road, turns out that there was a bear down there and EVERYONE wanted to see it. We passed on trying to see the bear though and moved on.

Old Faithful, well I can sort of say I saw it go off. We were heading on over to check it out and as we pulled into the parking lot, we both see this huge stream of water poking up over the trees. We both know what it was, but we went ahead and parked the car to go check it out. Of course, we were the only ones walking towards it and hundreds of other people were walking back to the parking lot. We didn’t feel like sitting around the 45-85 minutes for the next blast so we set off to see some of the other parts of the park.

We drove around the park checking as much out as we could in our time frame and shot a whole mess of pictures and here they are.

Here is Old Faithful in none of its glory.

We took the northeast exit out of Yellowstone which took us into Montana which we weren’t planning on but it was cool and we ended up on a great twisty road that was a whole lot of fun. Then we headed out to find a place to camp for the night. Looking at the map, we saw a town called Embelm, Wyoming which we figured would have a place to stay; we finally get to the city and find out the population is a whopping 10 people. I still can’t believe the place was on the map. We ended up staying in Shell, Wyoming after eating some gas station food for dinner, yum.

Day 3: Wednesday We got a fairly early start again and headed out to go see Mt. Rushmore. We got a nice surprise on our drive that morning. The drive took us through Big Horn National Forest. This was very beautiful and another great road to drive on. As we were going into the park I saw a white Audi behind us, but once we got to the twisties I lost site of him. We pulled over at one of the scenic overlooks and snapped some pictures and the white Audi pulls in with us. The driver gets out and walks up to me and says “Nice car.” Turns out he had a 1990 Miata at home; he told me that he had tried keeping up with me until his wife starting hitting him in the head with a thermos and telling him to slow down. Here are the shots that I took in Big Horn.

Actually in the third picture the gentleman with the grey hair is the Miata owner who came up to me and the guy in the green baseball cap was my travelling partner.

After that pleasant distraction, we were back on our way to Mt. Rushmore. As we were getting closer we see signs for Devils Tower of Close Encounters fame so we decided to go check it out. It was very impressive, and I shot a whole bunch of pictures while we were there. It was also nice to get out of the car for a while and do some walking around. Here are probably more pictures than you care to see of Devils Tower.

So after that we were really headed to Mt. Rushmore, or so we thought. As we were getting really close to Rushmore, I saw a sign for the Crazy Horse Monument. I had learned about this in one of my art history classes and really wanted to see it. Unfortunately, it was $16 dollars to get in and neither of us felt like paying (yeah we were cheap I know) so we were only able to see it from the road. We were going to go back after Rushmore but it was really overcast so we skipped it again. Here are the pics that I snapped from the street; if you look closely, you can make out his face in profile.

So finally we make it to Rushmore, and it sure is impressive. It’s amazing how accurately they can sculpt using TNT. Again, I snapped a bunch of pictures (gotta love digital cameras) and we watched the little video on the making of the monument. It was definitely worth the trip out there. But going back to Crazy Horse, to put things into perspective on just how big he will be when he is done. Crazy Horse’s face alone is just as big as all four of the faces on Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse is going to be riding a horse. Just imagine how big the final sculpture will be when completed. I highly suggest reading more about it on the link above. Here are the Rushmore pictures. The last one is probably my favorite.

After seeing all that, we headed out to put some mileage behind us and ended up spending the night around Sioux Falls, South Dakota, it was a really long day and we decided to spoil ourselves and get a hotel.

Day 4: Thursday Not much to say about this day. It was kind of dreary all day and we just drove. We finally ended up in Wentzville, Missouri where we camped at Pinewoods Park campground.

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