Welcome (back) to MINI

Posted on by Ian C.

Surprisingly, I discovered this weekend that MINI USA still send out welcome kits, quite differently packaged to what I’ve received previously; the interesting package design is intended to be re-usable, with instructions to turn it inside out and use it as a bag:

SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC

Contents include the usual MINI pen and notebook, also a quite nice MINI flash drive and of course a copy of MINI International; also included are “adverts” for MINI insurance, MINI Performance Motoring School, MINI Financial (but I’ve already bought the car so can’t understand this one!), a Name Your MINI sticker, a quite fun 101 Fundamentals of Good Motoring booklet, and of course the Welcome Letter (sadly no longer from Jim McDowell).

Nice job, MINI USA – a good reminder of why I’m driving a MINI again.

Distant Summer Lightning

Posted on by Ian C.

We knew that our new home was nicely located with a view over the wetlands, but we didn’t realize just how good our weather view would be – it turns out that living in (flat) Florida with the nearest trees a few hundred yards away gives us great views of both sunsets (examples: June, February) as well as the regular summer thunder and lightning – but it’s much harder to record lightning than sunsets!

Last night was spectacular; a storm maybe 20 miles west of us struck lightning both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground for at least an hour; we were too far to hear thunder except occasional deep rumbles, but we had a great view of lightning. This 1/2 minute clip is extracted from only 3 minutes of video I recorded:

Head to YouTube to watch in higher (full screen) resolution.