My MINI sat waiting for me in the snow this morning with a peculiar outgrowth of snow on the passenger side. Oh, that goofy Colorado snow! My new tires kicked butt today – the car drove like a champ on the ice and snow and I made it into work safe, sound and prompt.

So, just recently my beloved MINI enjoyed its fourth birthday and I decided to treat it to a spa day. Julie went out and bought a whole gaggle of car care stuff, and she and I spent the afternoon last weekend cleaning and scrubbing and waxing and polishing both of our cars.

I even went out and got it a pair of new badges. What’s that, you say? I don’t need no stinkin badges? Well, apparently Colorodo thought differently. So, I’ve had to give up my dear Oregon Salmon plates for good.

To top it off, I found a nice spot, parked the car, and got out my bags of camera gear and lighting equipment to take the shot it deserves. The pictures above were a couple of my favs.

All in all, this MINI has been the best car ever and I’m excited for another awesome four years. I’m amazed at how good it looks with a little srubbing – almost like it just rolled off the factory floor and still as stylish as ever. Here’s to you, MINI!

• Happy Super Tuesday, first of all. The latest I heard was that Obama’s pulled to an early 13 point lead over Hillary in California, but it’s not even 12pm PST right now and there’s a long way to go. Fingers crossed for the big day, though.
• Secondly, Happy Fat Tuesday. Because I’m in Miami, and not in New Orleans or Rio, there’s not much for me to say on the subject. For my British friends, enjoy your pancakes.
• I’ve been dating an absolutely wonderful girl for about a month now, and I have to say I’m very happy and excited. There are more remarkable things about her than I could reasonably fit in here, but I will say that she speaks Japanese (way cool), has a razor-sharp sense of humor, and is gorgeous. I’m a lucky dude.
• I made it back to Portland a couple of weeks ago for a weekend ski trip with Julie (the absolutely wonderful girl). It was an awesome, impulsive, thrilling and relaxing thing to do. I’m now a particular fan of last minute trips. I’ll post some photos at some point.
• Speaking of photos, I’ve been trying to shoot more recently. I got a new lens a while ago and I’ve really been trying to step it up a bit. I had a day in the Everglades recently where I got some nice shots, but not much. Then I had the chance to shoot Rachel (see the post below) a week and a half ago. There’ll be more to come. I’m working on moving most of my stuff to Flickr, so that’s where you’ll find any new stuff I post.
• The MINI is doing great – almost ready for it’s 2nd Level I inspection. And I recently noticed my tags are good through February 2009 – so take that Florida, I’m keeping my salmon plates.
• Work is great! Thanks for asking. I’m transitioning from the buying side to the planning side and am coming up on my one year anniversary (that blows my mind). Maybe there’s a new pair of agency flip flops in it for me?
• Oh, and, Comcast can go suck an egg. I’ve had it with them.
• That is all.

After speaking with Ian on Monday, we came down to Baton Rouge (”Red Stick” en francais) yesterday. It was an easy and wonderful drive. I, being me, forgot to write down the Lamar HQ address, so oops. I called Lamar in Portland and surprised them by asking for the address of HQ. Once we figured out where that was, we rocked by in our yellow truck (or “Miami Assault Vehicle” as Jenny has dubbed it) and tooted the horn as the whole Portland crew happened to be out front on a break from their training. Kinda surreal.

Ian gets us our room key and a note describing just all of the benefits Jenny and I were to get: hotel, happy hour, dinner, breakfast, huge celebration dinner today, etc. Ian, I love you. Lamar, thanks!

Jenny and I drove over to our hotel (directly across the street) and noticed that the truck wouldn’t fit, no way, no how. So, we drove around the block and found the Marriot, which had a huge parking lot. I decided to put on my Bambi eyes (I’m good at that, really) and waltzed into their lobby. I asked in the kindest of ways if we could usurp a good 5 or 6 parking spots in their lot. The guy said “no.” Then I asked if I could pay him for a spot. “Nope.” After I sighed, bowed my head, and began my slow swivel to retreat in defeat, he buckled. He told us we could have two spots, and to make ourselves inconspicuous.

We pulled into the lot and decided to get the car off first. Here’s where the hell begins. These trailers have two straps to go around and clamp down the front tires. They also have a chain up front and one aft. The idea is that you buckle down the tires, then find a solid bar on the underside up front to loop the chain around and clasp and same same at the back. The MINI has no solid bars on the underside. It probably has something to do with BMW (typically) not wanting you to treat your car like a commoner and tow it regular style. They’re always thwarting things like that.

So, instead of looping the chains around a bar, we’ve been looping the chain through holes in the wheels. Not a great idea (actually a pretty dumb idea), but the only possible option. Problem is that when the truck moves, the car bounces and the chain jiggles and torques. By the time we tried to get the car off, it had moved so much that we had a grand total of zero slack in the chain, making it completely impossible to get it off. Jenny got under the car and poked and prodded at anything she could find. We tried bumping the car forward, backward, forward again. Nothing. No love. No dice. We tried plan after plan for about an hour and we just couldn’t get anything to budge.

Then, our angels flew down from heaven (actually, they were really friendly painters coming out of the maintenance room). They looked at us, questioned what we were doing, then came up with an idea. “Why don’t we just pick the car up and move it to the left, thus effectively giving the chain slack?” “Sweet!” With a one and a two and a three, the car was a couple inches over. God I love small cars. We got the chain off, picked the car back up to move it in line with the ramp, and backed it off. Huge sigh of relief.

Then we stuggled to find a way to park the behemouth without disrupting the natural flow of parking and giving us a way to get out without getting blocked in. We went through 20 or so scenarios, and nothing worked. So, we trucked back over to lamar, and put on the Bambi eyes again. They gladly glave us a place to park in their huge lot, and even gave us a space in a gated and monitored area to boot. I love you, Lamar!

Jenny and I scrubbed up, dressed up, and showed up to the happy hour and then promptly crashed. We’re up this morning to head into New Oreleans. We’ll come back here for one more night, have a huge celebration dinner and pack out east tomorrow. Miami the day after that.

What a trip.

Jenny and I are safely in Colorado Springs, but only due to diligence, perseverance, talent, potato chips and a smidgen of good luck. Most of the luck has been somewhat lousy.

Check out the photos, read the story, have a good time.

We started off in the snow in Portland. That wasn’t a great sign. It snowed all the way the first day, and neither of us knew how this 16-foot truck with MINI in tow would perform on the slicks. We arrived at Meacham Pass on I-84 (our first big uphill) and noticed a good deal of accumulated snow forming. But, the motto was press on. It was kinda scary, but we made it to Ontario ’cause we’re rock stars.Day two was from Ontario to Rock Springs, WY…barely.

We headed out across Idaho and the potato state showed its true colors: snow drifts and mega-frightening cars crashed on the other side of the road. When we got to Ogden, UT, we really started to climb. The roads were just getting worse and worse and worse. Finally, just past Evanston, WY the truck started to slide on the ice that had formed over the road. Not cool.

By mile post 68, it was getting dark and we were noticing how few and far between hotels were. We decided we had to make it to Rock Springs if we were going to make it to Colorado Springs in time for the wedding we are now attending. So, we pressed on (starting to see a theme?).

Snow drifts look different in the dark, especially when trucks are passing you and kicking them all up in your bidness (windshield). The headlights bounce right off the snow and reduce your visibility to about 3 feet. And these trucks! Damn them. They were just plowing ahead. I honestly don’t know how they do it, cause we were all over the place at 45mph. But, Jenny was watching the painted line out her window, I watched the line outside mine, and somehow that was enough to get us all the way to “civilization” (I give Rock Springs slightly too much credit).

Jenny got us rolling on day three as we set out for Colorado Springs via Cheyenne. Finally, the weather was starting to work with us. The sky turned blue, the mountains and plains of Wyoming were dusted with a brilliant coat of snow, and seeing the Union Pacific trains chug along past you all alone out there was just really cool. This was the great wide open plains that you see in all the wild west movies. I’ve been out in that country before and have always hated it, but it was summer and about 104oF. Something about the “winteryness” of the whole thing turned it from suck to awesome.

Then we saw a sign that said “winds gusting 40+ mph”. Whoa mama. The truck, being essentially a huge sailboat with no keel (and not much weight in the back either), started leaning in the most uncomfortable of ways. I, being completely ridiculous, started leaning the other way to perhaps counter the effects. For 20 miles or so, we had a long brush with death. Fortunately, we didn’t get buffeted off the road, but there were some close calls.

We finally rolled into Colorado Springs, dropped off the truck at my uncle’s house and unloaded the MINI. So good to drive something so reasonable again. So, lots of stuff to do here today, including a brisk walk through the Garden of the Gods, so I must be off. We’ll check in again soon. Until then, peace be with you.

You should check out the site: hammerandcoop.com. It’s pretty funny stuff.

BTW The new MINIs are here. I saw a couple at the Rasmussen showroom, and they exceeded my expectations. Good looking cars.

Our beloved New York Times yesterday wrote a story about BSSP’s new MINI outdoor campaign. Ready for this? Okay, so when you drive by this billboard in your MINI, the RFID chip in your key fob zaps the billboard, and it in turn delivers a message especially for you. Cool huh?

So, why spend all this money on people who have MINI’s already? Why spend all this money to talk to you individually? Doesn’t this get a little too close to privacy issues? I dunno, we’ll see how this all unfolds. My suspiscion is that MINI drivers will be lovers of this campaign. I get the sense and read that we like that tribe feeling (and I think that’s a bit of an understatement). We definitely yak on and on about our wonderful cars, so the evangelical aspect of a MINI driver is valuable. And, hell, if someone asked me to particiate in this program, I’d waste not one single moment in saying yes. I don’t know that this really crosses the privacy boundary, mostly because you do have to sign up.

Bummer of the story? Well, it’s only in San Fran, Chicago, New York and Miami. I noticed that Portland wasn’t on the list. Even worse, the campaign went live yesterday, so I wouldn’t have even managed to stumble accross it when I was visiting down south last weekend. Yeah, bummer.

This might come off sounding snobbish and pretentious (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), but I have to get this out of my system. The current state of American cars says everything to me about why our beloved auto industry is flailing like a rodent in a bathtub.

My beloved MINI is in the shop for a bit of work, so I was given this ridiculous Pontiac Grand Prix to drive around in the interim. I can tell you, after having spent a day with this thing, that there is not one bit about this car that I even remotely like.

To begin with, it’s ugly. I’m not talking about mild cosmetic blemish ugly, this thing is more on par with radioactive creature from the Siberian swamps ugly. Of course, personal taste is just that – personal. But there are a few things even the most disparate of individuals can agree on, and I hope this is one of them. It’s a mixture of pointless blobs with no defined purpose and a proportion and balance problem that defies logic. There’s no central striking feature or theme and instead the beast resembles a mangled ball of plasticine.

But what really rubs me the wrong way is the interior. For a rental, I could really give a hippo’s patoot about how it looks from the outside. It’s a short-term fling, and I can get past it making me turn green when I walk up to it in the parking lot. But real beauty should be on the inside, no?

It all comes down to ergonomics and attention to detail. There are some very fine automobiles on the road today. BMW, Audi, Saab, Volvo, VW, and even Cadillac fall into this category (for the most part). It’s not just because they look nice or drive well. It’s also because you can tell the engineers cared when they were brainstorming and designing. When you put a button here vs. yonder, there has to be a reason. I’d have to say that the arrangement of the Pontiac’s interior is careless at best.

There’s no parallel design between components. They all feel like individually designed units that all ended up getting duct-taped together. What you come away with is a Felix-and-Oscar-like companionship between elements that does no one the least bit of good. This might sound nit-picky, but here are a few examples.

The odometer is placed in a computer readout array located above the radio. Why would you put such a small monochromatic display there, balanced uncomfortably on console’s left side? It leaves an empty void on the right side of the column and begs the question, “what is the sense in separating the odometer from the speedo and tach?” But, that’s where it is because it is nestled in with various other readout pages (displayed in very nonsensical short-hand gibberish) that don’t necessarily need to be in with the primary gauges.

This computer bugs me for one other reason. The background red is different than that of the radio’s more purple background. And, the text sizes and fonts are all different between the two.

All the buttons are made out of that soft mushy rubber that doesn’t feel intuitive when you’ve pushed it. It’s like the rubber on a TV’s remote control where you’re never quite sure if you hit the buttons just right because they’re so elastic. What I want is a button that goes “click”.

The driver’s seat has an electric motor to make it go forward and backward, but has a manual handle to adjust the recline of the seat back. Why? Why not all electric or all manual? Either is fine; seriously, I’d cope. It’s like having a power window on the left and a hand crank on the right. It just seems cheap and tacky.

The steering wheel has horrifically chunky faux-aluminum plastic accents that scream “frugal” and “lowbrow”. They make me feel like I’m bringing Two Buck Chuck to a nice dinner party.
In all honesty, the interior of my car has plastic components and oddly placed displays and features. But, the difference is they are engineered to fit with the car and conform to a very defined style. There’s uniformity, purpose, and attention to detail. My car costs a fraction of what this behemoth would fetch at the dealer. I have a feeling most of that cost goes into the huge power train. While it is a front-wheel drive 4-speed automatic (hardly a recipe for excitement), it’s got a 3.8 V-6 in it.

The bottom line is that a car doesn’t have to be expensive to be nice. All the makes I listed above build cars that cost, on average, a small fortune. But, somehow Honda, Toyota, Renault, Mazda and even Skoda (gasp) sell cars that are easy on the wallet and eyes, and have good usability mojo.

Why can’t Detroit understand why the rodent is flailing? Maybe it’s because the engineers are busy designing ugly rodent-sized swim caps instead of building useful rodent-sized waterwings.

This video sums up the way I feel about pointless technologies. If you can’t figure out how to park your own car, you really shouldn’t be wielding that license. It’s about as difficult to parallel park a car as it is to put on your pants – seriously. Line it up, put it in reverse, turn the wheel, turn it the other way, get out of the car (at least, that’s how I put on my pants…not sure about you). Parking – it’s one of the joys of living in modern times, in a modern city. We can get so easily spoiled that we’re willing to pay beaucoup extra bones on a device that does something not really requiring any effort or, god forbid, superhuman coordination in the first place!

When you whip that car into a tight spot on a street of busy onlookers, don’t you want to just get out, pat yourself on the back, and nonchalantly observe, “That’s right, I am that good.”? And if you can’t do that, well…don’t you feel like you really should just learn? Give yourself an afternoon, a parking lot, and two orange cones. Believe me, if you can maneuver through a drive-up window without having to get out of the car to hand the teller your money, you can learn to parallel park.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. “But, Elliott, you drive a MINI. A blind man could park that in a Lilliputian’s broom closet!” True, but I learned to park in an Isuzu. Whole different can of beans.

So, if I catch you holding up traffic for 10 minutes on NW 23rd trying to make your magic Lexus gizmo put your car between two others, I will swoop down and park in your spot (sans wizardry) while you continue pushing buttons. You’ve been warned.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, this is all part of my universal soapbox: I barbecue with charcoal, I drive a stick, and I’d rather sail than motorboat any day. As much of a gadget fiend as I am, no technology in the world can ever replace the feeling of self-worth that comes with actually taking the time and being able to do something yourself.

Alright, this dead horse looks pretty well beaten for today…

Woot woot. With the advent of my 25th birthday, I get to shave 25% off my auto insurance. I love State Farm, and thank them for believing in me as a good person. In exchange, I promise to drive 25% less. I’ll turn down my radio volume by 25%, and I’ll even cut the length of my in-car phone calls down by 25%. I guess turning 25 really means being a smarter driver. I’m feeling it already. Now, if only I can just figure out how to hit 25% fewer pedestrians.