MINI Meets

For a while now I have been working with Deborah who works at Seniorcare here in Gloucester (the same place that my wife Margaret works); the organisation provides various services to assist elders in staying in their home. Deborah specialises in support of “caregivers”, family members that support their elders.
Deborah loves MINIs and had the idea to combine a drive (like last years MINI Meander) with promotion of caregivers; she asked me to organize the MINIs, which I have been doing on this MINI2 thread.

Now with the date (Sunday April 25) fast approaching, there is more happening – we have Beverly Hospital providing a breakfast, at which some Massachusetts state “significants” will attend. We will of course have MINIs, with their drivers. We have locations to visit (Beverly, Wenham, Hamilton, Topsfield, Essex, Ipswich, Gloucester, Rockport and Manchester-by-the-sea) but I still need to put the exact route together.

And now we have our first media involvement, in the Hamilton Wenham Chronicle:

If you are local and wish to get involved in this event, please contact me – we could use a few more MINIs …

I spent a very entertaining few hours this morning at HMS Motorsport, learning about what happens at Boston Chapter BMW CCA Driver’s School events.
Central to the entertainment was Steve Fitzgerald – his knowledge, tales and personality were well worth the cost of entry (which, by the way, was zero)!

Steves track rules for cars are: “Make It Stop, Make It Turn, Make It Go – in that order!”; making track time fun was emphasized, with Steve explaining that if the car does not stop well, it won’t be fun and you won’t go so fast (because you are wary of not stopping).
Another serious tip was to upgrade your seat belts – the tighter you are in the car, the better you can experience and respond to the behaviour of the car. HMS carries and recommends SCHROTH’s Rallye 4 harnessbelt and has pictures showing them installed in a MINI with Lapis Blue interior 🙂

Also mentioned as almost essential was replacing the brake oil with a higher temperature spec oil, and considering replacing the rubber brake lines with stainless steel (to eliminate pipe expansion during hard braking).

I plan to attend an Advanced Driving Skills School, probably in early May; but I don’t know if I will ever do a driving school event (I don’t like the claustrophobic idea of a full face helmet wrapped round my head).