I was getting out of my MINI this morning and my pants bottom got stuck on the height-lever and i heard a crack a microsecond later.

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/8858/poorminiot4.jpg

I called my MA and left a message - i wonder what it will take to get the lever replaced. Hooray for low comp...must go hug my MINI. Anyone ever do this before? Hurt their MINI like that?

 

I dropped an antique lamp on mine, then knocked my son's new mountain bike over onto the hood ("bonnet", if you must). I felt like I had hurt someone. I gave it a hood massage and it was better, but will bear small scars for a while. I think of them as "character marks". After all, I have a fantastic son who shares my biking mojo, and I have a great wife with a really nice lamp. I've also got a really neat car who now reminds me that I've got a really neat son and a great wife.

It's philosophical, but it gets me by.

 

Hmmm ... now when you go to Mini meets you can show them off like scars from surgery.

 

Hooray for a great MA - the replacement is cheap (~25$).

 

"Chicks dig scars, pain heals, glory lasts forever"

 

I was in a rush this morning and did the same thing, only I took the lever clean off. Not only is the lever broken but the point it attaches to looks all disoriented and pulled out. I hope the warranty covers jean-related accidents.

 

I've caught my jeans on that before, but it has not broken yet. I was actually thinking about taking it off, as well as all other adjustment levers. I have not touched any of these for adjustment in years. Mechanics and service guys are always warned not to move the seat around.

My MINI has had its share of damage in my inept hands. Once I was late for a final and I backed out of the garage too fast and turned too soon, my front bumper was ripped off from the garage door jam. Another time I kind of backed over a cinder block and wrecked an S-lite and some trim. Then the times I opened the door into the garage column, the time some metal teapot from the storage rack fell from above, the time I sort of rolled my car, the numerous times I ran into a curb, that one time I first had trailing throttle oversteer...sufficed to say, the list is extensive.

Is that what they are calling it these days?