Back from another successful road trip with the Fb
07-23-11, 12:08 PM
#1
Back from another successful road trip with the Fb
Some of you may have read my little travelog last summer with my Fb and a 400 mile round trip to Algonquin Provincial Park in Northern Ontario. The unceasing reliability of the car made me more ambitious this year and I just returned from a 700 mile trip to Manitoulin Island, the world's largest freshwater island close to the north shore of Lake Huron.
It was an inauspicious start as I found myself gridlocked on the 401 while commuters slowed down to view the spectacle of a large furniture laden truck that had careened over concrete barriers and was lying down the embankment. This was 6:00 in the morning of the hottest day in history for Toronto (over 40 C or 104 F) and I was driving a car with no AC that was also designed to produce the hottest exhaust gases.
With the windows down and my protruding elbow deflecting airflow onto my face, its actually not bad at all as long as I keep moving down the road. Actually better than having a convertible because I don’t have to worry about the nonexistent melanoma on my nonexistent bald spot. It takes 3 hours and a nauseating succession of small town traffic lights to get to Tobermory where I catch the Chi-cheemaun car ferry to Manitoulin Island. The ship’s third mate informs us that the ship’s name is Objibway for “Big Canoe” as he hands us each a life jacket and a paddle to help propel it past its 12 knot top speed. That’s ok, I’m on holiday so I spend the next hours eating and watching back episodes of Combat Hospital. I fondly reminisce that I haven’t been on a car ferry for over 10 years until Denise rudely reminds me that we once took the now defunct catamaran from Rochester NY to Toronto. I’m ravenous with hunger so it takes me a while to notice that each table has placed a crisp white paper bag and my hunger ebbs. I later decide that despite it’s appearance, it is not a motion sickness bag but the thoughtful means to take leftovers away.
The car was a hit with the walk on passengers who were observing the loading process. Amid a sea of derivatively styled modern cars with their high waistlines and short overhangs, the sensually petite Rx7 evoked the romance of the 1960s until one guy hollered “Nice Trans Am!!!” A more knowledgeable middle aged couple asked me what year my Mazda Rx7 was (maybe they just read the brand new shiny OEM emblems I put on after the repaint) and when I responded it was an ’85, the wife just gushed about the car’s beauty. I gave them a blip of the accelerator to show them how beautiful the car sounded too. It was popular with little boys as well as I overhead a pair of brothers say they liked that car as they pointed to me while I was unloading onto the island.
This was my second time on the island. Years ago I scouted out a practice in the town of Gore Bay but that was in the middle of winter and I flew in on a Twin Otter, the most unpleasant flight in my life. Even more unpleasant than flying to Cuba on a Tupolev 134 because at least I beat the odds on that one! I had been invited to speak on astronomy to a group of young teenagers at a two week summer camp coincidently run out of an office at university where I had studied. The camp counselors were all undergrads and there were grad students giving the kids hands on experience with their field of study. The idea being to promote indigineous kids to stay in school by showing them what interesting opportunities exist. I’m glad they didn’t also ask me to talk about dentistry because they could be a hard sell! I had worked several days on a new Power Point presentation that had plenty of pretty pictures that I had taken in the past but I also had to start with the basics including mind blowing concepts like space time, time dilation and dark matter. In between I would take breaks and weave in humans stories about Einstein’s struggle to find a job and later his pivotal letter to Roosevelt, Galileo’s troubles with the Vatican, Canada’s proud aerospace heritage. I even talked about the **** rocket scientists and today came across the amazing wit of Tom Lehrer, satirist, muscian and mathematican on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
I seemed to hold the kids interest for over an hour and they asked questions but it was telling that the questions were more juvenile than I would have expected for the age group. When showing them the famous 2004 Hubble Ultra Deep Field image containing over 10,000 galaxies stretching nearly to the beginning of the Universe some 13 billion light years away, I told them that science doesn’t have a problem with the existence of God and that there must be other life out there. The kids asked:
“Are there monsters out there?” – Ahh, I think that anything we don’t understand or know about end up being called a monster.
“Are the aliens friendly?” - Good question, well the Spanish were not that friendly to the Natives. Just because someone has advanced technology it doesn’t mean that they’ll be kind. “Yeah that’s just like Battle Los Angeles!!!”
“Are there aliens in Alaska?” You got me! I have no idea if there are and why they would be in Alaska. “Well because I saw it in a movie called The Fourth Kind.” Ahhh, I see.
By 10 pm it got dark enough to set up the one scope I had brought. I had liberally presaturated a pair of jeans and a long sleeve rugby jersey with DEET but the mosquitoes still came. If you shone a light you could see the hungry hordes descend in clouds! We had a ring of mosquito coils around the scope and I had a Thermacell device running on the scope’s tripod tray. Still I got bitten but I can live with a half dozen bites if I was spared several hundred but damn it, they had to get me on the forehead and on my scalp and now I feel like Quasimodo (Denise says I don’t look that bad). It took quite a bit of time to show over thirty kids things through the scope and warned them to be in a for a bit of letdown. Deep space objects never look anywhere as colourful or as vivid as they do in photographs but there is something deeply satisfying in being able to lay one’s own eyes on the real thing. We saw a couple of nebulas of expired stars, the Hercules globular cluster and the Andromeda galaxy. They wanted to see a planet and the Moon had not yet risen and Saturn had long set. I told them they could see Jupiter if they stayed up past 3 AM. The twenty something counselors stared at me aghast, they were bone weary and wanted to get the kids to bed! As I was putting my gear away I was disgusted to see over two hundred dead mosquitoes lining the bottom of my tripod tray, they had apparently flown right into the heating element of my Thermacell unit.
So I slept in a tent for the first time in my life. They gave me a very nice tent with a cot and night table and LED lamp and with it zipped up I was impervious to the mosquitoes. I slept very well and awoke at dawn to a refreshing chilling breeze off of Lake Huron. The first ferry off the island was at 9 AM, three hours away. Then another 2 hour ride to be followed by a boring 3 hr drive. If I drove the long way around and crossed the bridge at the northern part of the island I could drive the 600km (360 miles) through Sudbury and Parry Sound and be home by lunch. It was a fantastic twisty drive through the rocky Canadian Shield and I was able to keep the windows up for the first couple of hours. The turbo fed greedily on the dense cold morning air as I passed slower traffic urged on by my GPS which continually updated my ETA as the trip progressed. It was the worst temptress, if I drove faster I could shave an entire hour off the projected six hour trip I could be home by 11!!! The car was really hitting its stride as the long drive had got all the mechanicals properly lubricated and loose. I had gotten over the disconcerting center free play of the steering, the wooden feeling brake pedal and the stunning lack of low end torque. I relearned to trust the wonderfully accurate tracking of the chassis and its nimble responsiveness and make sure I geared down enough to keep the revs above five thousand during a passing maneuver. At that sweet spot, the boost and engine would respond immediately to WOT and the car would zoom past the offending (or is that unoffending) slow poke with an exhaust shriek worthy of the 787B followed by a resounding induction baritone as I gear up into 4th and then 5th and back into my lane at 140 kph, oops that’s an indicated 140, the GPS says it really 153 kph. The Rx7 is really more satisfying as a GT rather than an all and out sports coupe. One has to work too hard to keep the engine on song, but if you keep it in 5th you almost never have to get off the gas and reach for the brakes because its so light and you have confidence in the handling and the miles just fly by. I had to stop once for gas at an obscure trading post because the tank was dry and eat and drink something because I was fading. They only had 87 octane, which the Audi would have balked at. I know Jim Downing used to race his Rx3s with even lower octane gas but I do have a low boosting turbo. As long as I drive like a GT, high speed in 5th but not actually boosting I should be fine. The highway became two lanes south of Parry Sound right into the three lane 400 at Barrie. I got home before 11:30 and washed the road grime off the car. I can't believe it, no stone chips on the brand new respray! What a car!!!!!
Jim
It was an inauspicious start as I found myself gridlocked on the 401 while commuters slowed down to view the spectacle of a large furniture laden truck that had careened over concrete barriers and was lying down the embankment. This was 6:00 in the morning of the hottest day in history for Toronto (over 40 C or 104 F) and I was driving a car with no AC that was also designed to produce the hottest exhaust gases.
With the windows down and my protruding elbow deflecting airflow onto my face, its actually not bad at all as long as I keep moving down the road. Actually better than having a convertible because I don’t have to worry about the nonexistent melanoma on my nonexistent bald spot. It takes 3 hours and a nauseating succession of small town traffic lights to get to Tobermory where I catch the Chi-cheemaun car ferry to Manitoulin Island. The ship’s third mate informs us that the ship’s name is Objibway for “Big Canoe” as he hands us each a life jacket and a paddle to help propel it past its 12 knot top speed. That’s ok, I’m on holiday so I spend the next hours eating and watching back episodes of Combat Hospital. I fondly reminisce that I haven’t been on a car ferry for over 10 years until Denise rudely reminds me that we once took the now defunct catamaran from Rochester NY to Toronto. I’m ravenous with hunger so it takes me a while to notice that each table has placed a crisp white paper bag and my hunger ebbs. I later decide that despite it’s appearance, it is not a motion sickness bag but the thoughtful means to take leftovers away.
The car was a hit with the walk on passengers who were observing the loading process. Amid a sea of derivatively styled modern cars with their high waistlines and short overhangs, the sensually petite Rx7 evoked the romance of the 1960s until one guy hollered “Nice Trans Am!!!” A more knowledgeable middle aged couple asked me what year my Mazda Rx7 was (maybe they just read the brand new shiny OEM emblems I put on after the repaint) and when I responded it was an ’85, the wife just gushed about the car’s beauty. I gave them a blip of the accelerator to show them how beautiful the car sounded too. It was popular with little boys as well as I overhead a pair of brothers say they liked that car as they pointed to me while I was unloading onto the island.
This was my second time on the island. Years ago I scouted out a practice in the town of Gore Bay but that was in the middle of winter and I flew in on a Twin Otter, the most unpleasant flight in my life. Even more unpleasant than flying to Cuba on a Tupolev 134 because at least I beat the odds on that one! I had been invited to speak on astronomy to a group of young teenagers at a two week summer camp coincidently run out of an office at university where I had studied. The camp counselors were all undergrads and there were grad students giving the kids hands on experience with their field of study. The idea being to promote indigineous kids to stay in school by showing them what interesting opportunities exist. I’m glad they didn’t also ask me to talk about dentistry because they could be a hard sell! I had worked several days on a new Power Point presentation that had plenty of pretty pictures that I had taken in the past but I also had to start with the basics including mind blowing concepts like space time, time dilation and dark matter. In between I would take breaks and weave in humans stories about Einstein’s struggle to find a job and later his pivotal letter to Roosevelt, Galileo’s troubles with the Vatican, Canada’s proud aerospace heritage. I even talked about the **** rocket scientists and today came across the amazing wit of Tom Lehrer, satirist, muscian and mathematican on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
I seemed to hold the kids interest for over an hour and they asked questions but it was telling that the questions were more juvenile than I would have expected for the age group. When showing them the famous 2004 Hubble Ultra Deep Field image containing over 10,000 galaxies stretching nearly to the beginning of the Universe some 13 billion light years away, I told them that science doesn’t have a problem with the existence of God and that there must be other life out there. The kids asked:
“Are there monsters out there?” – Ahh, I think that anything we don’t understand or know about end up being called a monster.
“Are the aliens friendly?” - Good question, well the Spanish were not that friendly to the Natives. Just because someone has advanced technology it doesn’t mean that they’ll be kind. “Yeah that’s just like Battle Los Angeles!!!”
“Are there aliens in Alaska?” You got me! I have no idea if there are and why they would be in Alaska. “Well because I saw it in a movie called The Fourth Kind.” Ahhh, I see.
By 10 pm it got dark enough to set up the one scope I had brought. I had liberally presaturated a pair of jeans and a long sleeve rugby jersey with DEET but the mosquitoes still came. If you shone a light you could see the hungry hordes descend in clouds! We had a ring of mosquito coils around the scope and I had a Thermacell device running on the scope’s tripod tray. Still I got bitten but I can live with a half dozen bites if I was spared several hundred but damn it, they had to get me on the forehead and on my scalp and now I feel like Quasimodo (Denise says I don’t look that bad). It took quite a bit of time to show over thirty kids things through the scope and warned them to be in a for a bit of letdown. Deep space objects never look anywhere as colourful or as vivid as they do in photographs but there is something deeply satisfying in being able to lay one’s own eyes on the real thing. We saw a couple of nebulas of expired stars, the Hercules globular cluster and the Andromeda galaxy. They wanted to see a planet and the Moon had not yet risen and Saturn had long set. I told them they could see Jupiter if they stayed up past 3 AM. The twenty something counselors stared at me aghast, they were bone weary and wanted to get the kids to bed! As I was putting my gear away I was disgusted to see over two hundred dead mosquitoes lining the bottom of my tripod tray, they had apparently flown right into the heating element of my Thermacell unit.
So I slept in a tent for the first time in my life. They gave me a very nice tent with a cot and night table and LED lamp and with it zipped up I was impervious to the mosquitoes. I slept very well and awoke at dawn to a refreshing chilling breeze off of Lake Huron. The first ferry off the island was at 9 AM, three hours away. Then another 2 hour ride to be followed by a boring 3 hr drive. If I drove the long way around and crossed the bridge at the northern part of the island I could drive the 600km (360 miles) through Sudbury and Parry Sound and be home by lunch. It was a fantastic twisty drive through the rocky Canadian Shield and I was able to keep the windows up for the first couple of hours. The turbo fed greedily on the dense cold morning air as I passed slower traffic urged on by my GPS which continually updated my ETA as the trip progressed. It was the worst temptress, if I drove faster I could shave an entire hour off the projected six hour trip I could be home by 11!!! The car was really hitting its stride as the long drive had got all the mechanicals properly lubricated and loose. I had gotten over the disconcerting center free play of the steering, the wooden feeling brake pedal and the stunning lack of low end torque. I relearned to trust the wonderfully accurate tracking of the chassis and its nimble responsiveness and make sure I geared down enough to keep the revs above five thousand during a passing maneuver. At that sweet spot, the boost and engine would respond immediately to WOT and the car would zoom past the offending (or is that unoffending) slow poke with an exhaust shriek worthy of the 787B followed by a resounding induction baritone as I gear up into 4th and then 5th and back into my lane at 140 kph, oops that’s an indicated 140, the GPS says it really 153 kph. The Rx7 is really more satisfying as a GT rather than an all and out sports coupe. One has to work too hard to keep the engine on song, but if you keep it in 5th you almost never have to get off the gas and reach for the brakes because its so light and you have confidence in the handling and the miles just fly by. I had to stop once for gas at an obscure trading post because the tank was dry and eat and drink something because I was fading. They only had 87 octane, which the Audi would have balked at. I know Jim Downing used to race his Rx3s with even lower octane gas but I do have a low boosting turbo. As long as I drive like a GT, high speed in 5th but not actually boosting I should be fine. The highway became two lanes south of Parry Sound right into the three lane 400 at Barrie. I got home before 11:30 and washed the road grime off the car. I can't believe it, no stone chips on the brand new respray! What a car!!!!!
Jim
07-27-11, 02:11 PM
#6
Waffles - hmmm good
iTrader: (1)
Nice post. Its good to hear about 1st gens doing long trips.
I just did about 1200 mile round trip to Indianapolis IN from Charlotte NC without
a gliche in the SA. Would have been nicer with AC but otherwise very pleasant.
About 9.5 hours each way.
These first gens sure can be reliable. I know folks that commute 100 miles round trip
everyday in theirs with no problems.
I just did about 1200 mile round trip to Indianapolis IN from Charlotte NC without
a gliche in the SA. Would have been nicer with AC but otherwise very pleasant.
About 9.5 hours each way.
These first gens sure can be reliable. I know folks that commute 100 miles round trip
everyday in theirs with no problems.
07-29-11, 08:13 AM
#7
Thanks guys, glad you liked it. The only reliability issue that I've noticed is my multifunction switch that controls the headlights. Often the low beams won't come on until I try a few times and probably heat up the electrical contacts in the switch until the circuit completes. I cleaned out the contacts a few years ago by spraying contact cleaner but it probably doesn't do a thorough job. Mazda probably never intended that switch to last so many years.
Jim
Jim
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
4sfeedit
Canadian Forum
1
09-07-15 10:55 AM
CaptainKRM
2nd Generation Specific (1986-1992)
14
08-26-15 09:52 PM
4sfeedit
3rd Generation Specific (1993-2002)
10
08-16-15 01:42 PM
4sfeedit
Race Car Tech
0
08-11-15 04:11 PM