7.9.2019 - Mini Day!

When Jim sold the 1996 4Runner this year, the plan was always to transition the 1997 4Runner into his work car and to get Jim a car.  He did a lot of researching and decided he wanted to go look at Minis.  When we went down to Ghent to the lumberyard a couple of weeks ago, we made a detour to the Albany Mini dealer.  We found out that it was too late to "build" a Mini to your precise specifications.  However, the biggest piece of information was that 2019 was the last year for manual transmissions!  They are doing a redesign and at least for 2020, there will be no manuals.  We had the dealer search for a car like we wanted and there were none in the state.  Jim did test drive one though, which really solidified the decision if we could find one without compromising.

Jim did some searching on his own and found a 2019 Mini John Cooper Works - the top level - in a manual.  It was used but was just bought less than a month ago and only had 700 miles on it.  So we took a road trip yesterday - to outside Philadelphia PA!  It was about a 5 hour trip so we decided to go the day before our appointment and stay overnight.  We checked into our hotel and then had a great dinner at a local Ale House.

This morning, we got to go check out the car - and it was beyond what we had hoped for!  The woman who bought it decided she really didn't like the manual so traded it in for an Audi.  Lucky for us!

Jim with his new ride - he sure deserves to have a nice car.  Jim and I have been together almost 35 years and he has had 2 new work pickup trucks in that period - no cars!  He works so hard every day with no breaks - even our insurance agent said that he deserves to have something fun to drive!

Before we got on the road, we stopped at Chick-fil-A for lunch.  Since we don't have any around us, we had no clue that today was Cow Appreciation Day!  If you wore any type of cow costume, you got free chicken.  We didn't wear a costume but we still got a visit from the Cow!

 
The new Mini is very high tech with all the bells and whistles - quite different than the 4Runner.  Jim had to get in this car, figure out enough of the navigation and basic operations to then drive 5 hours home - in crazy New Jersey traffic around NYC while making sure he didn't lose me following him!

It's a gorgeous car and we were so happy to get it back to Angel!

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