One Step at a Time

Whew! Everyone here is still in one piece. I'm a bit frazzled though. This has been a crazy two weeks and not in the best way. It's really starting to sink in how lucky I am to still have my Sports Fan alive and relatively normal.

The Sports Fan's recovery is going well, though it is slow. It is a process. One that takes months and months and months. It's unbelievable that someone else can impact our lives so seriously for so many months. Our hearts are heavy and not just because this is a long, slow process. Not only because we're losing precious months, maybe a year of our lives because of someone else's uncaring moments of inattention while (not) in control of their potentially lethal vehicle.

There's an ache where our CoopahS used to be. :( We're no longer MINI owners, at least for the time being. We've begun to discuss what the new one should look like, what color it should be, what features it should have... and for me, the all-important question of what the wheels should be. And in our hearts, the answers are always CoopahS. Therein lies the trouble. We can't have another R53 because now they make R56s instead. It's a different car with a different engine, etc.

The person who ran that red light took something very precious from us. We'd never lost the excitement for CoopahS that we felt the very first time we got into him at the Moritz showroom in Dallas. Every month or so, we'd pack our little guy full of stuff, folding chairs, luggage, art supplies and knitting, cooler, cameras, etc. and go on another Motoring adventure. We did that for four years, always with the thought in mind that someday he would retire to the garage and become strictly an autocross car that got trailered to the track once a month while a newer MINI of some sort became the Sports Fan's everyday driver. Then we'd never lose the excitement of our first MINI.

Was it squished in that accident two weeks ago or did it evaporate in that intersection with the spirit of our little guy? Or maybe it was killed. Could a small flame still burn in our hearts for motoring adventure in another MINI? It remains to be seen. I want it to be there, but I guess I won't know until another MINI arrives in our garage.

CoopahS in the Moritz showroom, ready for our first motoring adventure!

I just want to resurrect a little of that enthusiasm so we can start to feel normal again.

On the BEAT!

Who put that Lotus Elise in with our MINI Coopers???

And this one isn't even the "Shaguar" which is the personalized license plate of the Jag belonging to the BEAT's organizer's, Mike and Janice.

A perfectly gorgeous Bentley.

OK, I did drool near this one. it's owner said he lost the badge on the way up from Tucson on Friday. I can't imagine cleaning those wire wheels though I'd like to give it a shot if I could own one of these!

We just loved looking at this one, except when it was in front of us during the Twelve Miles of Terror part of the run. Stately cars just don't have a place on such a twisty, roller coaster track of a road that's better left to the Lotuses and Mini Coopers that know how to take the twisties!

I tried not to drool too much. My dad would have loved this event and especially this gorgeous 1955 Jaguar XK140 with the perfect red paint. Everyone details their classic cars to perfection for this road trip.

This 1950 Austin beauty was on the BEAT for the first time. It lived for years in a garage in Jerome, AZ, and was recently bought and restored. The perfect navy blue leather interior is original though the paint (English White) is not. It was originally baby blue. A lot of the older British cars have three headlamps.

CoopahS wouldn't miss the BEAT! It has taken place on the Saturday and Sunday following Tax day for the past 12 years now. Phoenix to Wickenburg to Prescott, then through Jerome to Clarkdale, and on through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff where we stay overnight at the Little America hotel. After a breakfast buffet and some raffle prizes, everyone takes off at their leisure for the trip back to Phoenix via Payson. The prize for the car coming the farthest went to a car from British Columbia! The event is now limited to 125 cars. This year, 15 were MiNis, including one classic Mini.

The Sports Fan, CoopahS, and I can't wait for next year!

3000 Miles in 11 Days!

3000

Yep, that's how far we've gone in our MINI this month through the 11th. It has taken me more than a few days to recover enough to write this post. The Sports Fan is still working on that one. Of course he drove 2900 of those 3000 miles. The spoiled princess here only drove 100 while he was tired. I'm not sure. He may have just said he wasn't tired anymore when really he was tired of my driving more than he was of driving his car himself! It's kind of weird to drive someone's car when they're in it with you. I feel more comfortable driving CoopahS when I'm alone. Of course, I am totally comfortable with the Sports Fan driving Jeepy, too. But if I have to drive him, I'd rather do it in Jeepy. How many people do you know with a 10 year old car who still love it as much as they did ten years ago?

Me. Me. Pick meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I still adore my Jeepy.

OK, where did we go? From the 1st to the 3rd, we were in LA for MINIs Take The States, sponsored by MINI USA. We went on some runs, met a bunch of fun MINI owners and enthusiasts, and got to drive all of the new MINIs on a pseudo auto-cross course in the parking lot of the Rose Bowl.

We came away from that with one thought. We like our own MINI better than the newer ones! The turbo lag is disconcerting when you are used to immediate response from a super-charged engine. The power steering has changed and it tries too hard to be intuitive instead of being responsive. It is like it is trying to think ahead of you instead of just reacting in the fastest possible way imaginable. They've had to raise the hood a bit to comply with some European traffic laws having to do with the people you might be running over with your car. We don't like it. The headlights no longer raise up with your hood so that your MINI can howl at the moon when parked on top of a mountain in the dark. Instead, they peek out of holes in the hood. We don't like it. The back end is raised up ever so slightly. We don't like it. If I wanted to look at the mufflers, I'd look at the many badly modded Honda Civics with big-ass old wings on their back decks and Folgers cans bolted underneath. You see them all over Phoenix. Unfortunately, you hear them before and after you see them!

That being said, we had a great time and while I might enjoy the amenities of living in Los Angeles, I hope to hell that I never have to drive on the freeways there. Those people are seriously in need of agression and death-wish therapy! The smog is prettier in Denver... or even here in the hot place.

So then we came home and the Sports Fan hit the office for two days while I attended morning and night classes at Art Unraveled as detailed in a previous post. Don't make me repeat myself!

On Wednesday morning, bright and early, much earlier than I really wanted to be going, we were off to meet up with other Rat Packers and M.A.D.M.E.N. for a drive up to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, our intermediate destination. Obviously, the dryer didn't want us to go either since it was refusing to dry our clothes and I ended up staying up all night to tend it. When we got up in the morning, the Sports Fan took one look at the jeans I wanted to have dried and draped them over the Coug' out in the garage and set a fan to blow on them. How disgusting is it that they were drier faster than if the dryer had been working properly! (The dryer is fixed now and I'm shocked by how quickly things dry now that it is working properly again. I hate it when things go out slowly and don't scream, "I'm broken. Fix me!")

I've driven over the Res a few dozen times. I don't need to see it. I slept pretty much through that part. I woke up long enough to take a photo of the speedo just outside Kayenta when CoopahS turned 90,000 miles.

We paused in Cortez, Colorado long enough for a potty break and to buy snacks and purchase lottery tickets. (Note to self: check lottery tickets to see if the Sports Fan has to go to work tomorrow!) We finally got into Pagosa just before supper time. It was early enough to find a yummy dinner with our pals, Jon and Patty from the M.A.D.M.E.N., at Chato's, a Mexican restaurant we discovered a few years ago in their opening week. I had a big ole Margarita and a yummy chimichanga with some killer salsa. All I needed was to finish off a Hershey bar I'd started earlier and kick back with a Diet Peach Snapple and my email back at the hotel after hitting the hot tub for a bit. Great day. I love days on the road with the Sports Fan and our CoopahS!

I can't emphasize enough the joys of driving with a small group of 7 instead of the monster group of 30 we had with us on the same trip last year. It was nice not to have to worry if everyone made the turn. We could see that they had! Restroom breaks didn't take an hour or more. It was nice.

Let me just say that most cops KNOW that they are screwing up your day and most of the ones who have screwed up mine in the past were at least polite. As an opening line, "Bad day to be the leader of the pack, huh?" doesn't fit into my definition of polite. Especially with the penalty that came with it. It's right up there with people who would post a photo of their acquaintances dealing with this POS cop in my book. Of course, having friends who would pitch in to help pay the frieght sure makes up for it, as does having friends who are verbal in their appreciation for all that The Sports Fan does for the Rat Pack. (Here he is with the other two people who work really hard to make sure that MINI owners have fun motoring, Dee and Scott, with the club banner shown in their Cooper Cards booth at MTTS.)

Eventually, we got to my favorite spot on earth, Copper Mountain, Colorado. When I die, just sprinkle my ashes under the L lift in Union Creek at Copper. Seriously. Do it. Sprinkle Mr. Jaspy there with me, okay? He's in that box on my desk.

We liked our condo. We liked the temperature (under 70 most of the time!). And we loved being with all our MINI pals from all over. Jon and Rick and the MINI5280 folk do a ton of work setting up MINIs in the Mountains for all of us to enjoy and we do appreciate it. Of course, they have a fantastic dealer in Ralph Schomp MINI. Shelly of Ralph Schomp does a ton to make sure that they have whatever they need to make the event work. Plus she is a really sweet gal, fun, funny, friendly, with a really good understanding that MINIs are not just cars. They're a lifestyle.

If you think that your MINI is just transportation, we're sorry but we have to take it away from you and re-home it with people who can appreciate its personality and exactly what sort of impact owning and driving a MINI has on your life.

And the mileage ain't bad. ;-))

Friday saw us on the road to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) with a hundred or so other MINIs. By the time we got to Ward, CO, we got tired of their breaks and decided to go on ahead on our own. We don't want to wait in no steenkin' lines for the bathroom! Instead, we forged ahead to Estes Park and I took the photo in the last post of the Sports Fan in front of the walkway along the Big Thompson River behind a Starbucks. We met the baker down the street who has a MINI and didn't even know that MITM was happening. (How do these MINI owners fall through the cracks??? We met a ton of folk in LA who didn't know that MINI clubs existed! The SoCal MINI Maniacs may have a few more members by now!)

For our first date in 1997, the Sports Fan and I drove my rental Taurus through RMNP on the first day it was open that year, at the end of May. Stopping at the top of the peak on Trail Ridge Road was interesting and proved to me that my body obviously does not handle oxygen well. (So naturally I lost no time moving to 8600 feet!) We stopped again lower on the other side of the mountain to take a hike up one of the trails. On subsequent visits, we haven't been able to pin down exactly which trailhead is the one we stopped at that day. We think it was Green Mountain Trail now but until I get my knee working better, we can't hike up it to find out.

We've driven Jeepy through the park a few times, but this was our first time through with CoopahS. I think the little guy appreciated the trip. He sure handled the altitude well. We often attribute this to the larger intercooler that the Sports Fan acquired from a guy in Austria who bought the remainder of the larger capacity intercoolers from the folks who made them for MINI for the Works car... or was it the GP? Whatever, it is one of the many mods thoughtfully made to our CoopahS by the Sports Fan and it works great for us.

Below is a photo of the two guys who work hard to make MiNis in the Mountains a terrific and fun event for everyone who takes the time to motor on up to Copper Mountain, CO in August, Rick and Jon from MINI5280, the Colorado MINI club. You can see some of the awesomeness of Copper's summer mountain splendor.

Sue, Marilyn, Jodean, Patty

The views certainly show you why America The Beautiful was inspired by the vista from Pike's Peak, just a little ways south of Copper. I hope you all get to experience those views for yourselves one day. Pictures don't do it justice.

What Happens in Vegas...

We just got back from A Mini Vacation in Vegas. It wasn't our best trip to Vegas ever due to some weather that affected the electricity at my sweetie's office and therefore, his servers. The Minis jamming the Strip on Friday night was sort of anti-climatic because we were toward the front of the group and somehow got separated from the other Minis. That made it more like being stuck in the regular traffic on the Strip than last year when we were in the middle of the pack. Oh well. There's always next year.
For the rest of the event, other than the usual boring dinner where only the White Roof Radio guys who were talking thought they were fascinating (they even laughed at their own jokes), we had a great time. The people we sat with at dinner were from our club (the Dynamic Mini Collective) mostly so we enjoyed them as we always do. I sat next to one of the older members and really enjoyed talking to him and hearing about his wife and family and his racing Mini. His son had won a challenge race the day before in his Mini against a car owned by the publisher of MC2 Magazine. And at least I came away with one handknitted socknearly completed and won a Meguiar's car cleaning kit that CoopahS will appreciate.

We didn't go out to the track on Friday. Instead, we went off to meet up with one of my online pals from one of the Yahoo Art groups, abc_decos. The food is always good at the Cheesecake Factory and the company was lovely. We just couldn't stop yakking! And despite showing photos of our canine kids to each other, we neglected to take any photos! Silly us. We did go on the Valley of Fire run with the group and really enjoyed it. We wished we had done that run the previous year so we would have known to rent a big SUV and take my family out there at Christmastime. Somewhere around 200 MINIs on that run made it the biggest run we had ever been on aside from the Strip Jams.

We did manage to come home with more cash than we left with, so I guess we'll tell that much. We also came home with a really sweet stainless steel exhaust for our automotive kid, CoopahS. It has a nice burble and not too much WAH, which I would NOT like! I was threatening to come home with someone else if I didn't like the sound! We had a nice, quick drive back and had left in time to avoid big delays at Hoover Dam. It gets incredibly busy with tourists as you can imagine.

While it wasn't our best Vegas trip ever, if you can't have fun in Las Vegas, you're dead and someone forgot to bury you! If nothing else, that place offers some of the most amazing or spectacular sights, fabulous people watching, glamour, fashion, incredible shopping... there's really no end to what the Sin City has to offer! And on this particular weekend each year, it offers the chance to shop like mad for everything MINI Cooper. I got a zillion great ideas for my '07 BRG Mini Cooper S Cabrio Sidewalk edition when I get it. One of the most fun aspects was being able to see over 400 Mini Coopers of all flavors, each one of them unique in some way.

And that's the way we MINI owners like them!

What I really wanted to blog about on Saturday...

Or what I actually wanted to blog about on Saturday and just never did get to it was our trip in our MINI. Here's CoopahS at the Grand Canyon.

Have I mentioned that we have a MINI Cooper S, CoopahS? He is a 2005 BMW Mini Cooper S with a Webb Cold Air Intake, a 15% reduction pulley, really sticky 17" tires, a strut tower brace, and an H-Sport rear sway bar. He even has his own website. Last Saturday, he managed to output 162 horsepower at the Dynamic Mini Collective's dyno day at a performance shop in Mesa. I just heard about it. I was at a cool workshop but more about that later.

So yesterday my sweetie and I went on a run with the Rat Pack (the Desert Rat Pack is the Phoenix chapter of the DMC) that Dan, my sweetie, had organized. He got up earlier than early and primed me well with Starbucks. Then off we went to Mesa to meet up with other Rat Pack members at a Starbucks where I had another venti mocha caramel frappacino light with whip and drizzles, this time with an extra shot of espresso. That's the ticket!

We saw all kinds of fun things and really scared ourselves on one turn. It was uphill with no guardrail and a surprise decreasing radius turn. Before we knew it, we were headed for the edge! Whew! Dan quickly turned a little tighter and without even a squeak from a tire, we were on our way. What a great thing that MINIs stop so quickly!

After the trip to the top, we stopped where the pavement does and milled around yakking and taking some photos. I was trying to get a photo of the perfect heart-shaped cactus leaf! It's in the center of the photo, the lone vertical leaf.