MINI Meets

I should have posted this on Monday night, but I was busy – then I forgot … oh well, I am sure no-one is bothered!
On Monday, Theo was at MINI Peabody to have his MINI upgraded with the JCW. I organized with local MINI owners to meet up there and have lunch – but the weather prevented most people coming, but of course Theo was there, and most of his MINI(!)

Dave did the JCW upgrade – here he is (on the left) with Gary:

Jeff (BakerJC), Jared (PezBoy), and Ivan (Snek) were also there for at least some of the day; and Jared and I joined Theo for lunch at TGI Fridays (THANK YOU Theo!)

Theo did get his car back again … he wrote on MINI2 I’m taking it easy so I haven’t explored much over 4500. The couple of times I’ve gone up that far have been quite promising. It’s amazing how smoothIy the torque builds and I do notice a good deal of torque coming on in the low/mid 2000 rpm range that seemed to be absent prior to the 210 upgrade.

Back from a long weekend in Rhode Island, including meeting 35 other MINIs for MINIs-Making-A-Wish (a repeat of this event held last year).
On a cool Saturday morning, we drove to the southern end of Rhode Island and met up with everyone at Steve Scales home. There was coffee, a raffle for the unique Whalen shift knob (congratulations Jeff, thanks Gavin for the pic), Santa hats and meet & greet with other MINI owners.

An excellent drive had been planned, taking us all through various back roads of Rhode Island, including a stop at “Rhode Islands largest body of fresh water” – in a couple of places we had police to assist with crossing traffic, and we even had an escort up 15 miles of Route 95!

After a stop at Krispy Kreme (very long lines for the bathroom!), where the toy collection launch occurred a month ago, we finally arrived at the Make-A-Wish headquarters and delivered 1400 toys! Steve also presented $2500 raised by the Whalen raffle and by other activities including the sale of “wishes” organized by his daughter Jessica – very impressive!

The last picture is a group pic taken by Gavin – thanks!

We finished the day with a late lunch and lots more chats – hello Steve (*2), Max, John, Gene, Diane, Jared, Rich, Gavin, and everyone else.

Steve (PinCity) posted a final summary of the event here: 1,409 Toys, $2,501.10 Donations, Fun with you guys…… priceless!