What Up?

We went on a scavenger hunt with fellow members of the Desert Rat Pack (the Phoenix chapter of the Dynamic Mini Collective) yesterday. It was really fun. We met in the corner of a parking lot in downtown Phoenix at 10 am, left to start collecting our loot at 10:30, and met up at a nearby restaurant at 12:30 to have some lunch and count up the points.

Points were collected for bring back things from a list (400 points) as well as for catching digital photos of things from another list (300 points). CoopahS headed over to Dan's nearby office to pick up some office supplies, stopping at a 7 Eleven for Peanut M&Ms, an apartment guide, and a receipt between $1 and $1.37. We didn't know that there are only 2 of each color in a packet of M&Ms so we lucked out in getting 3 in one package, but only had 1 in the other. :( We don't eat Peanut M&Ms. While Dan was up in the office looking for things, I sat in the car and studied the list, thinking about where we could find things.

I think that people went shopping too much. I feel that the spirit of the game is to use your resourcefulness and find the things, not to just go spend money on them. Scott bought a six pack of cold Moosehead to get the bottle cap. Others bought packages of thumbtacks, Mini Sharpies, and pencils. We asked a couple of people to pose for us but other than that, the only thing we did was to pose for a couple of photos ourselves. The rules didn't say we couldn't. We spent about equal energy on the two lists. Click here for a little video of our photos.

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.