A few weeks ago I found a kitten that had been separated from its mum. Earlier this week she became eligible for adoption, and I took her home. She's much the same affectionate and needy cat as she was on that magical day, but she also doesn't seem phased at all when I go out for the day, which is great.
That's all 
Owning a mid-engined road car just doesn't feel fair. You're taking an idea that was developed to solve niche problems in a track environment, and just driving it around like it's a normal car. It feels like you're cheating somehow, like you're getting away with murder.
It feels like when you're at a work dinner, and it's 7 courses and 2 desserts and you don't have to pay.
If feels like one of those fancy restaurants that have a chocolate fondue fountain, and you realise that technically you can dip anything you want under the chocolate, even chocolate cupcakes.
It feels like when you're on holiday and you're having breakfast and they offer you a beer, and you have no reason to decline, and it costs 40 baht which translates to roughly 0 in your currency.
It feels like being on holiday. Except it's every day. You come out of the supermarket, put your groceries in the frunk, and off you go.
It feels like Doug Demuro comically doing chores in a Ferrari 360 in 2014, except rather than entertaining Youtube content it's the real world and actually you don't have any other way to get groceries.
They say a car like this should be a second car, that to drive it for mundane chores diminishes its appeal to the point that the downsides outweigh the upsides.
I posit that the opposite is true. Using your special car for everything makes everything special. Yes, you occasionally forget you're in a special car, but then you remember and it's great. Driving an automatic Camry 90% of the time might make you appreciate the special car more, but it's not going to make you happier. Because a Camry doesn't make people happy, special cars do. So drive those instead.
Maybe it's because my lifestyle means I don't have to drive that often. Or maybe it's because the MR2 is an ideal mix of fun, reasonable maintenance and real world usability that enables such behaviour. Or maybe I've seen too much Magnum PI.
Whatever the reason, having a mid-engined road car is the best.
sunchaser. remember the sunchaser?
On Friday I went to the pub to meet some friends and get some fancy "Good Beer Week" beers, and on the way I heard an incessant mewing from the garden of a dilapidated house on Barkers Rd. There was a tiny kitten in there calling for mama. I tried to say hello and got hissed at for my troubles, so I let her be.
But she was still there when I walked home, and when I checked the next morning too. And still crying out for help. Something had to be done.
I don't have a pet, so I contacted a mate who's got a cat carrier and we plucked little Hami from the garden and took her home. Gradually over the morning while I was meant to be working from home, she went from fearful and hissy, to purring and affectionate, to meowing whenever I wasn't in the room to comfort her. She also became very playful and exploratory for a cat who was anchored to that spot in the garden! She ate a little chicken and some kitten food, though we estimated she was too young for it at 4 weeks based on weight.
It was a very rewarding day, but young kittens need specialist care, so I took her to a local vet. They said she had fleas, and had maybe missed a growth phase from living on the streets. I reckon she'd have been in trouble without human intervention - she spent 14 hours straight in the exact same spot and didn't seem fit to finding her own food.
Maybe in a few weeks I'll be taking her home again. Who knows
there's a motorcyclist in my building. it's some sort of cafe racer thing. it actually is a harley, but not what you'd picture as one. every morning i hear him start it up and leave, every evening i hear him arrive home. fair enough, motorbikes be loud.
but what i hear is him doing his best. he doesn't loiter around letting it idle to wake up the apartment building. he doesn't rev it hard when he leaves. but he does make a concerted effort to get out on the main road as quickly and quietly as possible. he understands that there's a time and a place to rev the thing past 10k RPM, but it's not his neighbourhood at 8am on a Monday.
he's a local hero
A while ago the MR2 was stricken. A long while ago. Two full months ago it went to the Toyota Whisperer for repairs, and there it stayed.
(Is the workshop's trailer, not mine. I don't have a trailer, or a second car. The MR2 is it.)
The problem looks bad but the fix isn't really. Make up a plate, weld it in, coat it with underbody coating. It was the making of the plate that took forever, and all I could do was sit on my hands and wait. Fortunately the man I took it to is the right man, and seems to have done a great job.
The bad part was losing my car. For me, like many of us, a car isn't just transport. I can't imagine not having a car, and the MR2 is part of who I am - even if it is a douchebag sports car. It was carefully chosen, and it's about the only car in the world that fits my needs like a glove. Having it gone for a month was like being unable to listen to music, or forced to eat nothing but soylent milkshakes. It was life without a big chunk of its joy. I felt like I was no longer an MR2 owner, photos of my car made me reflect on when I used to have one.
But now it's back. A slow drive home in heavy traffic in the wet is all it's done so far. But I've got a mind to give it a good wash and take it somewhere nice. Somewhere I can bring the 3S-GE to its redline, stretch its legs.
It hasn't rained in more than a week, and it just dumped 12mm in 20 minutes. Not heaps, but a short timespan and everything flooded. Including my car port!
The MR2 has pretty good clearance, which has helped me out so many times. I never want a proper low car.
I actually forgot to post on the exact date, but here we are a few days later. Some of you may remember my initial post from when I found a stray kitten. Well, the rest of the story is that she went to a vet, then a foster carer until she was of adoption age (8 weeks), then to my home. I said in the original post that I am a cat person but wasn't looking for a pet, but she's mine now and she makes every single day better. At the point of that post I'd been dating a vet for 2 months or so, we're still together and she's helped ensure Hami has the best of care
Things are working out alright.
Here's a photo of Hami sitting on her favourite paper bag, next to the bed she never uses.
Here are a couple videos from the day I found her. Yes she was filthy. Had no idea what I was doing, all I knew was she needed help.
And it was sick. I've actually driven one before, but the chance to get in and around one is still a rare thing.
The buckets are tiny. They make a 300ZX's rear buckets look spacious. They're weirdly steep too, and no matter how short you are there's very little headroom. I did fit though.
Something about that car's interior just gets me going. The shape of the rear of the roof - it's all just so tight and small and without compromise. Its purpose is to be a beautiful sports car, and the roof line reflects that.
Here's a pic, the only pic I got of the day. It's a friend's car, but he keeps it in storage so it's not often seen.
In transit back to Cradle Mountain, Tasmania, after spending 6 days hiking the famed Overland Track. It was splendid, here are some pics.
The Staria was pretty good too. 
today is grand final day here in melbourne, coldies and the game is the plan. bit early for the beach though
@amoore100 said in Design Details: Decklid CHMSL:
From spoiler-esque to true spoilers, it was a common factory option with ‘sporty’ variants to stick the CHMSL in the spoiler assembly
you can always tell when one of these has a spoiler added later, since they tend to leave the 3rd brake light present in the interior for a total of 4 brake lights. same with lancers
execution looks good, but i can't help thinking a fiero convertible is missing the point. but hey, my MR2 is mostly a convertible and that's cool so
@awesomeaustinv @pos_camaro this freaked me out since i'm pretty sure the mangusta isn't an ugly car. read up on it: this headlight arrangement was a response to, as ever, overly strict safety rules from the land of the free.
from wikipedia:
The Mangusta was imported into the United States via a federal waiver which applied to the car due to its small production numbers. The waiver exempted the car from safety regulations which were in effect in the time as the Mangusta came without seat belts and had headlights far lower than what the federal regulations allowed. When this exemption expired, the front of the North American car was redesigned in order to accommodate two pop-up headlamps instead of the quad round headlamps present earlier. (...) European cars continued with the original quad headlight grille.
here's how it was meant to look, and it's fine at low angle.
@flatisflat i have to assume that lucid paid a lot of money for the thing, given how heavily involved with it they seem to be.
it's surreal seeing a new car's paint get all this attention, given how long it's been since my car's paint got such a treatment. it just seems like an awful lot of effort to spend on paint that was in pretty good condition already.
it's like doing a factory reset on a brand new phone or something
i posit that silver is still boring, because everyone gets it and they do so because it's boring. but this example does look snazzy in the sun
welcome to australia, mate