MTTS

After a morning meet-and-greet, then driving through town traffic from Boston to Gloucester, lunch in Gloucester, and a spirited ride back to Boston, we spent the afternoon at MTTS’08 Boston driving MINIs on the auto-x and meeting MINI friends old and new, including auto-up-windows MINI circuit fan Mike (left, with Pete). Throughout the afternoon, it was never busy – maybe everyone was still out stuck in traffic between Gloucester and Boston – so the parking lot was sparse, but with two happy GPs:

 

At 6pm, the beer taps opened – to the relief of many, including Gerry Matthews and his MINI USA colleagues; and as 7pm closed in, people headed over to the music stage for The Fountains Of Wayne – but with few MINIs in the parking lot, there weren’t many people at the stage either … and many of them were MINI USA or R.A.Events folks, including Trudy, sporting skid marks on her arm 🙂

 

 

Oh, there was also a proposal! The girlfriend was shocked silent but did manage to say “yes” eventually …

 

And that’s the end for me – I’ll spend Sunday not doing MINI stuff, and prepare for another MINI marathon next weekend!

Many thanks to MINI USA (especially Gerry, Jim, Steve and Trudy), R.A.Events (especially Kevin & Ray), to Margaret, George & Jayne, Theo & Carol, Michael & Pam, Richard & Lynne, Ivan & Norrine, Brian & Susan, Sheena, Mike, Peter, Todd & DB (of White Roof Radio), and everyone reading … it wouldn’t be much fun without all my MINI friends!

One of the “fun” things at MTTS’08 Boston was a “velcro bouncy castle” for the kids – you wear a velcro suit and leap up on a velcro wall, to see hopw long you can get stuck 🙂

Well, George decided to try it out – he’s almost small enough to wear the suit, but it was a challenge getting it on! But then, on to the “castle”:

The MTTS’08 Boston events included a MINI merchandise sales booth, a number of “fun” things (hardly noticed by most folks), a big soundstage (which you couldn’t miss due to the volume emanating from it) and over the back, a great auto-cross track layout – with assorted MINI provided cars to try on it!

My first drive round the track was in an automatic Clubman S; it was HOPELESS! It would lag for unpleasantly too long before down shifting out of corners and was simply not enjoyable. So, I took it round a second time, in Sports Drive mode instead of standard Drive … much better! Now with the revs held higher, it could power out of corners with no shifting lag. Some will argue to try it in full manual, but what’s the point – if you want manual, buy a manual …
Next, I managed to get in the manual Clubman S. Wow, I wish I hadn’t! It brought back all the issues I had with the clutch on the R56 I owned for a short time 😦 The R56/R55 clutch simply has no feedback at all, somewhere near the top, the clutch connects but there’s just no indication that it happened … it’s so NOT like GPMINI and my convertible that I drive every day.

It was easy to get more laps, there were only about 10 people in the queue! But be careful who you’re behind: on another drive, the guy in front must have done the whole course at 5mph; even waiting till he’d done half way round, I caught him up before the end 😦

 

George was busy doing laps too – I jumped in the passenger seat of “his” convertible for one loop, so I could take a few pictures: