Where I Talk About the Ride...

With cycling, often times the pleasure comes from just getting out and riding - cruising past the scenery and just having the chance to explore, and have fun at whatever pace the rider chooses. Well, driving can often be the same way... at least, it should be much the same. I plan on bridging that gap very soon. I plan on motoring!

Let's back up a bit... Jenn and I had been looking for cars. Both of us drive (drove :o( ) SUVs, mine a 2WD Explorer Sport, and hers was a 4WD Blazer. Neither vehicle is great on gas mileage, with mine being the better of the two since it's lighter. During the course of our hunting, one of the cars we looked at was a Mini Cooper (simply because there was one on the lot at the time). We talked about it a bit, and finally decided that "once we got some things paid off" and we were seriously looking at replacing a vehicle, we would look at a Mini.

Well, I've periodically been looking at the main site (www.miniusa.com) over the last few months, and emailing a dealer about some of the questions that have popped up. Finally, this past weekend, My sister and I popped to Virginia Beach (the closest Mini dealer to me) for a test drive and make the decision. (Actually, I had already made the decision, but it was more to the point of committing to ordering one.)

Now, I have very limited "manual" driving (having driven almost exclusively an automatic, outside of some scattered moments with some other family cars that were manuals), but my opinion is that to really enjoy the Mini experience (to "keep it real" if you will) it would have to be a manual. So, it has been ordered... all I have to do now is log some miles in a "manual transmission" car before I go to get it sometime near the end of August...

That's when I'll really start motoring...