GPMINI driving to MINIsOnTop – early planning

Posted on by Ian C.

This June is going to be a great driving time for North East MINI Motorers; of course we have MINIsOnTop (June 26/27), at an all new and spectacular location this year – the Attitash Grand Summit hotel in Bartlett, NH.
But a weekend of getting together with 200+ MINIs is not enough for some owners, and this year The Great Ice Cream Run 2 is being organized (a modified repeat of the 2007 drive)
TGICR 2 has been shortened, starting in Staunton, VA instead of Florida, giving more time to enjoy the view, and a “spare day” in Bar Harbor, ME before heading over to MINIsOnTop – unchanged, of course, is the daily Ice Cream, including everyone’s favorite deep fried ice cream!

TGICR too short for you?
How about preceding it with a drive along the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP)? In 2007, TGICR included this drive, and now for 2009, Tar Heel MINIs is organizing a drive from Cherokee, NC to Waynesboro, VA (close to Staunton where TGICR participants meet up) – see here for more.

GPMINI waits patiently in Florida for my next visit, and will get to come home via the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Ice Cream Run drives … for now, I’ve simply entered each overnight point on to Google Maps (guessing that I’ll break my first 570 miles in to two days):

I wonder who else will be Motoring this June?

MINI friends at MINI of Peabody

Posted on by Ian C.

It’s been a long time since I visited MINI of Peabody – busy work, no MINI issues, no mods … but today Jason was down from Northern Vermont to have a new throttle body installed in his R56 S, so I headed over to say “hi” – and so too did Ivan, and Gavin! After chatting a while, we headed over to H.M.S. Motorsport where Jason discovered he likely needs new racing harnesses for the upcoming season, and also purchased a neat miniature widescreen video camera for recording his auto-x days (I want one too!)

Then back to the dealership, where we were joined by Brian & Sarah, after which we all headed down, round, up, round and down again to get to Chilis (just a few yards north of the dealership, but a long way round on a divided highway!)

 

Great food, and great company 🙂

MINI of Peabody’s Motor Zone

Posted on by Ian C.

MINI of Peabody has created a new website for themselves, planned to be more “blog like” than the normal MINI USA created sales site.
Of interest to local MINI skiers is an announcement about Ragged Mountain Resort’s Green Day 2009 … I have meant to post a similar announcement for a while, but it didn’t seem to fit into my normal posting (in as much as I don’t ski – and their website auto-plays annoying music!), but being prompted by the new MoP website, here goes:
… We are planning a Green Day event for March 14, 2009. The purpose of the event is to provide people with ways they can live a more environmentally conscious life. We will be having several vendors on-site, all of whom have been selected because they are environmentally friendly businesses. As a MINI driver, I am aware that MINI is doing a lot to make the automobile industry greener. I felt it would be beneficial to the event and to MINI to have a presence here because as you probably know there are no MINI dealerships in NH, ME, or VT. As such, we are offering discounted lift tickets for people who arrive in their MINIs.
I would love your help in getting MINI drivers …

They go on to ask that I send an announcement out to our MINIsOnTop list, but I’m not prepared to do that!