I'll chime in as well in saying it was fantastic and am very also very appreciative of what MINIUSA did for us...

The swag in the mail ahead of the event.
The catered food on both days of Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca
The kick-off beach party
All the photo ops of course
The House of Blues
Co-ordinating with the folks in Albuquerque for the fun time at Sandia M'sport park
etc...

All of that I got to partake in and had an amazing time. I wish too I would have gone further (I got as far as halfway between Albuquerque and Amarillo before I headed south through Roswell, White Sands, Las Cruces and back home to L.A. on the I10).

On the one hand I would love to do this every year with MINIUSA but I am afraid it would lose its luster and appeal if it happened too often... Too much of a good thing and all that...

I wish I would have encountered more enthusiasm from my co-workers at the BMW/MINI Design Studio in Newbury Park so that we could have had the convoy stop there on the way to Ojai on Day 2 to give everyone interested the 5cent tour of the place and an insight into the design process that goes on behind the scenes...

I guess my only other gripe/bummer is that on the way to Flagstaff I had to drop my wife off in Phoenix as she couldn't afford to take more days off from her work. This made the rest of the drive somewhat lonely especially since it seemed that on the next day and a half the groups of MINIs seemed to get more and more spread out on the interstate... oh well... You get over the loneliness and when you look at the big picture you realize how special it was.

Thanks again so much!!!

-e

 

PS: People have been posting links to their pics all over the place on NAM, would it be worth it for one of the moderators to assemble all of these in a sticky somewhere? Not all the pics, just merely a page that would have the links to everyone's online pics... Maybe even organized by MTTS leg?

... I'd be willing to help organize the url's ...

Still haven't posted my pics as I burned 6 CD-Rs on my return home and have only made it through approximately half of them so far in editing and sorting...

-e

 

That's too bad about the tickets. :( I guess we got lucky on our leg.

My husband and I did the Indy to Charleston leg and loved it! If it were to happen again (did I hear Key West?!? ), I would definitely do more than 1 leg.

I was surprised we didn't meet any cops on 52 along the Ohio River. It used to be a hopping road for local police/sheriffs to get their quotas.

 

Looks like a new GP owner was also pulled over by the same officer that pulled me over in Gauley Bridge, WV.

Steve

 

mel- I forgot to tell you when i saw this.
I am still waiting for the total ticket count.

 

i told yall not to get into too much trouble!

 

I also got tagged running solo coming out of Frenchtown, NJ. State trooper says I was going 60 in a 45. He let me off for a burnt out headlamp, still cost me $54. Another interesting note was he clocked me while both of us were moving in opposite directions. He did a flip to pull me over.

 

Alot of states have rolling radar. I'm glad PA isn't one of them. :-)

 

I heard that too. Something about doing a North/South trek in 2008. There was also mention of starting in Canada.

I think MINIUSA were surprised at the level of reponse they got. Although it's a lot of work for them I beleive it is relatively cheap advertising and so it shouldn't be too difficult to squeeze it into the budget. 2008 could coincide with the launch of the MINI Traveler (or whatever they are going to call it since the word Traveler cannot be used).

 

All I have to say is that MTTS was a great event, my first road trip in my Mini.
Days before the event I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it, I was going solo and I though I wasn't going to meet anyone or have fun. But thank God I went I joined in Dallas and went up to St Louis, I drove a little bit over 1700 miles, spent 40.145 gallons of gas, made 35 Mini friends that I intent to keep in touch and get to know about all these Mini related websites and clubs; I was very ignorant of the Mini community I didn't know it was so big and nationwide so this trip completly changed my view of the Mini life.

You are right about the speeding tickets, states troopers were on the look out for Mini's specially in Texas, one of the guys in my caravan got 3...all in Texas :(

I had fun in every stop, at the Baseball game in St Louis I met Jim McDowell, he is way cool!

 

Very cool trip. Almost 8000 miles from my house and back. Also over 120 hours of driving time. I tracked everything on my GPS.
It was alot of fun meeting all the new people, and putting faces to names. Can't wait for the next one.