I drove the go-kart to work this morning for the first time.\u00c2\u00a0What a thrill! I put the top down and let the wind tug at my hair. I leave so early in the morning that the temperature was comfortable, even here in the hottest part of the Summer. I\u00c2\u00a0even turned off the\u00c2\u00a0a\/c (which was like hitting a boost button, by the way).<\/p>\n
Of course, the thrill of driving a new car, especially one as fun as the Miata, is always tempered a little by the initial curve of learning the feel of the controls. I had a few missteps. Obviously, the Miata has a brilliant gearbox – one of the best ever on a production road car. The lever has extrememly short throws into\u00c2\u00a0tightly grouped gears. Unfortunately, I’m used to shifting in more of a row-row-row your boat<\/em> kind of fashion with long throws and questionable engagement. So, it took some time for me to adjust. I had some difficulty\u00c2\u00a0shifting into fifth gear, but I seemed to be better by the\u00c2\u00a0end of the drive. Worse, on two occasions I made a “money shift” from fifth to second, while trying to go to fourth. That’s really, really\u00c2\u00a0bad. Luckily, I caught them quickly before the engine over-revved.<\/p>\n I was also ham-footed on the throttle while attempting heel-toe downshifts. I’m used to heavy Audi flywheels, so when I blip the throttle, I really give it a good poke.\u00c2\u00a0The Miata’s throttle just needs a little tap to get the job done.\u00c2\u00a0This definitely calls for more practice, but\u00c2\u00a0I’m up for it!<\/p>\n This car is so…much…fun.<\/p>\n jimmy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I drove the go-kart to work this morning for the first time.\u00c2\u00a0What a thrill! I put the top down and let the wind tug at my hair. I leave so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[9],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-cars","7":"tag-miata"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5zSfL-L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306,"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmypribble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}