MINIsOnTop

Eric Zwirnmann recently emailed me a HUGE panorama image of (almost) all the MINIs parked at the base of Mount Washington during the wet afternoon of MINIsOnTop 2005:

Click on the pic to get the full size image, which is over 18000 pixels long, and about 1.7MB! Dial-up users beware …
But it is a great picture, and clear enough to spot me standing in front of my MINI, and count a total of 182 MINIs – you can even read a couple of license plates!

This morning there were a lot of dirty MINIs, caused by the wet weather yesterday, and the slippery auto road! Some people were chatting, some were washing their car (even Steve washed GOMINI – and washing for him is a distant second to motoring)

On the way home, after catching up & passing John and Maureen, and visiting Pollys Pancakes, I caught a Hot Orange Convertible heading south on 93; we had fun playing “follow the leader” for a while & snapping pics (hopefully the owner will make contact so I can see his pics):

Phew! A great weekend, requiring three hours to sort and post all the pics & write-ups … now I have to go online and see what everyone else has to say!

Saturday was sadly a WET day. It started wet & stayed wet – but it did not damp the spirits of the MINIsOnTop attendees. Not much chance to enjoy the views on my way to the Loon Mountain gathering – the Kancamagus Highway looked like this:

When I arrived, my first stop was to the school group who had volunteered to wash MINIs, collecting donations for their school – they did a great job on GBMINI & on many other cars too!

(they also happened to have some umbrellas for sale – very useful!)

As the rain continued, people either put up with it, bought an umbrella, or crammed under the MINIsOnTop welcome tent – there were a lot of people and a LOT of MINIs!

Happily Richard gave another of his excellent “driver meet” speeches, before the MINIs set off, then (most of) the MINIs headed off along the Kancamagus Highway:

A few MINIs & owners hung around a while, resulting in some police activity, while other MINIs set up a “posse” to round up stray MINIs:

Eventually five of us headed off to the auto road to prepare for the afternoon, stopping on the way in the original MINIsOnTop 2003 lunch stop …

At Mount Washington auto road, MINIs slowly gathered while we waited for the tent to become available (it is used first by a running race up Mount Washington, and we have to wait until they finish). Eventually everything was ready and we had food, speeches & prize presentations under the tent while the rain continued outside:

The fabulous raffle prize, of a two year lease of a MINI Cooper donated by Herb Chambers, was won by Theo! Other prizes included a Whalen Shift Knob from Whalen Shift Machine, and a Valentine One Radar detector donated by Chris Winslow and won by John!

Then it was time to drive up the auto road to the top of Mount Washington – the conditions were marginal due to the rain (thanks to my passenger Elliott for taking pictures); the problem was that once we reached the non-pavement section of road, it was just a mud-slick with minimal traction – the car felt like it wanted to steer its own way instead of my way, and I did not like the fact that it was doing that with a many-thousand-foot drop on one side of the road.

So I quit! I pulled over and let the last few MINIs go on up, then turned round and headed down again – the MINIs that did go got up and back down successfully so it was not dangerous or impossible, but I simply did not feel comfortable driving.
I headed back to the Town & Country Inn, had a drink & some ice cream, and ended my day safely …

Here’s a couple of pictures that Jason took – he did go all the way to the top of Mount Washington!

Also see this MINI2 thread and this one for more information and post-event chat.