It's Here! It's Here!

Our new Cooper MINI S arrived a week ago. It's as the original pictures show, except it tends to have Katherine or I driving it. It's as fun as the Miata was but has more height, front wheel drive, traction control, better headlights, glass rear window, and other stuff which will make a better second winter car.

The all wheel drive Audi will still get any winter runs up into NY or PA snow country.

It's also faster, but that doesn't make it a better winter car. :-)

It also has a rear seat, but I am not sure even our 10 year old niece would have enough leg room. It's best left for cargo (which is still a major improvement on the Miata).

We saw the our former Miata yesterday, BTW. We sold it to friends at the start of the month, and in spite of the wet New England fall they have had the top down a fair amount, and enjoying it a lot. Yesterday the Miata led the MINI down some rather twisty roads to lunch, making for a pair of happy putt-putts.

As an aside, we discovered in the period between the Miata leaving and the MINI arriving that we are NOT a one car couple. Between the infrequent suburban bus service and the general hub & spoke layout of Boston area transit, it just doesn't work out for us ...

I want my MTV

Back in August or so, we ordered a new car from Herb Chambers MINI of Boston, a 2006 MINI Cooper S convertible. (You can see pictures of the ordered configuration). We considered one off the lot, but I wanted a few things, like the particular color (British Racing Green), and I was willing to wait. And besides, our 1997 Miata was running fine, it's not like we NEEDED the car instantly. Estimated delivery was sometime in October.

Fast forward to ~ 2 weeks ago. The car was confirmed to have been built in England, in transit, and on schedule. We offered the Miata up for sale, and delivered it to friends who snapped it up. So we canceled the Miata insurance, and while we were at it we told our insurance to be ready for a call from the dealer.

So by this week we're limping along (not badly) on one car. But that's okay, our regular dealer updates are consistently telling us the car is due this week. I checked Monday and the car was in port in NJ, by their estimate it would be a day to install an alarm and one to three days to ship up here. That put the car here between today (Wednesday) and Friday.

Yesterday, I got down to the credit union and picked up a rather large check to pay for this puppy. Having that paper just sitting around makes me nervous. But we're ready to rock.

Only now it seems our dealer was full of guano, I checked today and after calling NJ they figured out the alarm is actually a delay of 5 to 7 working days. So the car which was supposed to be here this week won't here until early next week at the earliest.

There goes my weekend plans (I was actually going to take Friday off and toddle about in our new toy), and generally pulls a rug out from under my happy mood. It's like I've been stood up on a date.

It doesn't make me feel better that it is utterly stupid to be disappointed:

• Small car, but big toy.
• The last car we ordered (5 years ago) also got hung up in port for almost two weeks. We half expected this.
• We'll have the car for years, a week doesn't matter.
• People have bigger problems that than this (like being broke or wearing a pager because they are waiting for a organ transplant)

But I am disappointed, and maybe a little full of self-pity. Ain't life grand?