Cool already at 4pm – bring sweaters! No MINIs yet.
The hotel is “adequate”, to my mind its room rate is not justified – who ever heard of a $250+/night hotel with no air conditioning!? And I have to pay $10 for Internet on top!
Apart from that, the room is comfortable and spacious, and the food tonight in the bar/cafe was good.
Tomorrow, we’ll have a tour of the area, then Thursday the “big event” begins 🙂
Comfortably in time for my trip to Monterey, my MINI Takes The States registration pack arrived today:
Contents include a welcome note, car sticker, travelogue (custom notebook!), quarantine kit and a couple of MTTS armbands (the key to the event – without them you can’t join in the planned events!):
Curiously, although we were told to register each attendee, the two armbands per registration pack allow a driver and passenger … since I (and many people) correctly registered my passenger (Margaret) separately, there’ll be loads more armbands than people – good for last minute folks, not so good for head count planning!
I’ve never been too interested in the MINI Cooper S with JCW GP kit – GBMINI#3 is only a year old and the GP is simply not designed for day-to-day use; it’s 18″ wheels will give a horribly harsh ride, and are likely to be easily damaged by potholes; the rear seat removal doesn’t much affect practicality, but the fact that you can’t choose any options is disappointing …
On the other hand, after a year with MCSa GBMINI#3, I’ve concluded that there are times when I miss the manual transmission, and there’s often times I miss the power of the JCW in GBMINI#2 – it’s obvious now that the last years waiting and rumours about a JCW upgrade for the MCSa will never come true in USA (see one of Jeff Straccos answers on MotoringFile).
And I was very impressed by the GP video released back in February:
Yesterday I received a GP press release package from the New York motor show, and the fabulous pictures on it finally corrupted me – I decided that I could buy a GP while keeping my current MINI, using that car for day-to-day driving (softer ride with 16″ non-runflats), and the GP for fun rides when I want the power … although who knows how that plan will change once I own two MINIs!
The other thing that swayed me was the super cool Monterey delivery option and the MINI Takes The States coast-to-coast drive; I’ve always fancied driving coast-to-coast (though not as frantically as this trip), and MINI offered a simple way to solve the problem of what to do with the car at the other end!
So this afternoon I visited MINI of Peabody and gave General Sales Manager Paul Taylor a $1000 deposit … he wasn’t sure that he could get another GP (each dealerships allowance is variable), but having a deposit in hand is likely to sway things.
However, I totally missed any chance of signing up for the Monterey delivery, unless some strings can be pulled! So now I wait to see what can be done …
M&I / GBMINI 