Our stop at the highest point on the BRP

Not a long post, but just wanted to quickly update progress on my MINI journey.  I am currently on a “tour” that is really made up of several events that segue into each other in a unique manner.  It has started with the Tar Heel MINI Motoring Club’s (THMMC) Blue Ridge Parkway Tour 2009.  At the conclusion of this, I’ll be hooking up with The Great Ice Cream Run 2 run by a member of the NEMINI club.  At the conclusion of that, we normally would have done the Bar Harbor Invasion, an event that in the past has been conducted by the PhillyMINI club.  Even though they are not doing it this year, I am still staying a couple days in Bar Harbor and will try to carry on some of the traditions they have established.  Finally, I head over to Minis On Top, a national MINI event at Mt. Washington that is put on by a group of individuals dedicated just to that.  Judging by the show of hands, it looks like there may only be 3 of us that are making it the entire way through these tours.

Signing the MMAC banner

I’ll also mention that it is my understanding that this is going to be the final run for the MINIs Motoring Against Cancer banner.  This is a banner created by THMMC that has been passed around to different MINI clubs and MINI events to help raise awareness and funds for cancer research.  We will run it up to Mt. Washington, then back home to NC for it to be retired.  Our club will then take up a new call for charity.  As an aside, that is one of the great things about our MINI club - all the charitable efforts we engage in.  For instance, today I wore my pink ball cap for breast cancer awareness (and the funds I used to get it were donated to the Kay Yow WBCA Cancer Fund).

Devil's Courthouse in the background

Back to the event at hand.  On Thursday several of us caravan’ed down to Cherokee where we were staying Thursday night.  Our dinner was at the Brushy Mountain Smokehouse, a BBQ joint that was also set up as a buffet.  That was kind of different.  They also had ice cream which several of our group tried.

Friday morning we got an early start, with a group picture at the start of the parkway’s south end at 8:00 a.m.  We visited Waterrock Knob, the highest point on the parkway, Devil’s Courthouse, the Folk Art Center in the Asheville area, Craggy Gardens, Mt. Mitchell, Linville Falls, and the Rough Ridge Trail (which we are donating to this year - I’m sure someone has a picture of our name on the donor sign).  We ended the day with a run down Shulls Mill Rd. into Banner Elk and then dinner in Beech Mountain at the Famous Brick Oven Pizzeria.

Pretty awesome seeing the line of Minis coming down the Parkway.  One downside though is that I’m doing it on my own this year (no wife), so it is a bit lonely.  I’ve also been frustrated with my homemade camera mount and camera equipment.  Almost to the point that it is intruding on my enjoyment.  Had to spent some time with The Bible tonight to help me focus on enjoying God’s creation and not letting little things bother me.  I’m seriously considering not even trying to get any pictures or video from in-car on Saturday and try instead to just relax and enjoy the ride.

So I’ve setup a gallery for all the from all the tours I’m doing and I’ve uploaded the first couple days (day 0 and day 1).  Enjoy!

The Hanging Rock - yes, I hiked all the way up there to get this pic

On Friday, June 12th and Saturday, June 13th I did something quite a bit different.  Went and attended a “retreat” for some men from my church and other guests that was put on by my Pastor.  The retreat consisted of a camping trip up to Hanging Rock State Park.  It is a little scary I suppose to think about it, but it has been a few *decades* since I last went camping.  As a little kid was the last time, though I do have some fond memories of attending a Boy Scout jamboree one summer.  I think it must have been down around Fayetteville as there were some military vehicles around and we found all kinds of “brass” in the field where we were camping (keep in mind that to us kids, brass was very interesting; not so much after target practice and you have to police it all up).  I don’t count all the times I camped out in front of Reynolds Coliseum to get tickets to basketball games while I was attending NCSU.  Although probably as cold as it was a few times it should count as “camping”.

Luckily, Pastor Mark and some of the other guys were all prepared with the equipment needed for a successful camping trip.  I get the feeling they must have been before.  (Aside in my head:
“You think?”)  So all I had to do was bring some drinks, a sleeping bag, some bug spray, and clothes.  I ended up using a sleeping bag my son got for Christmas as part of a tent set he received.  As I discovered, the sleeping bag was about paper thin.  Just enough to keep me warm from the cool night air, but absolutely no padding to help combat the hardness of the tent pad I was sleeping on. (more…)

30,000 miles that is.  Took my MINI in for a regular service on May 22nd and on the way there hit the 30,000 mile mark.  Based on the service intervals, looks like my “free” services are done.

30,000 miles on MINI WUF

The service itself didn’t seem to really consist of anything other than checking fluid levels and a visual check of the car.  So about the only good thing that came out of the visit was getting my rear latch replaced as it had been giving me some trouble.

I’m now getting ready for my MINI multi-tour journey in a couple weeks.  Hopefully I won’t have any trouble out of my tires as they are down to only about 4/32’s of tread left.  I’d like to get the trip completed, then put some new rubber on.

In between now and then, I’m supposed to be going on an overnight camping trip/retreat with some men from my church.  The time since I last went camping can be measured in decades, so this ought to be interesting.  In getting ready for that, I’ve been reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Covered Bridge Run - version 1 took us on a visit to the Pisgah Covered Bridge

After making it one year attending Mini events, I figured it was time to step up and take on some rally master duties.  Actually, I suppose this was decided quite a while ago, but the timing worked out well.  And I did help a small group get from Mt. Mitchell to the Asheville hotel during last year’s Blue Ridge Parkway Tour.  This event will (I hope) help me as I think I may be leading some during the Not A Bar Harbor Invasion Invasion.

The event was the Tar Heel MINI Motoring Club Covered Bridge Run held on April 18th.  The idea started with a posting by Twister asking whether anyone wanted to help organize a covered bridge run and a link to a page full of covered bridge locations in NC.  Using that I did a bunch of Google mapping and research to eventually figure out that the bridges on the list were mainly grouped down west of Asheville, a smaller group in the Boone area, and some in the central part of the state.  I decided to concentrate on the central part of the state for this first attempt since I could spend some time scouting out the bridges. (more…)

Last summer I wrote about my server at home making it 283 days without a reboot. At the time, I only had to take it down to get some work on our air conditioner done, which required cutting power to the house.
Well, a power issue did me in again. Last weekend some bad storms rolled in to the area. Almost immediately our power went out. It was kind of interesting as it blinked on and off several times. Then, looking at some lights, I could tell a little juice was getting through as the bulbs were burning dimly.
At that point I decided to go ahead and proceed with taking the server and other computers down. Interestingly, my desktop PC was running fine on the UPS. But for some reason, the server had entered a restart loop (which means it had crashed - not sure how that happened with the UPS). Before I could get that sorted out, the UPS ran out of battery power.
So the power was out for about 10 hours. Next morning I rebooted the server and the clock is running once again.
The good news is my ol’ server made it 302 days without a reboot or any problems.  I can live with that.

Gathering at the Lowe's. Wow! That's a lot of Minis!

Back at the beginning of April, the Tar Heel MINI Motoring Club held the Second Annual Bullfrog Run.  The Bullfrog Run was created in honor of one of the early members of the THMMC who went by the screen name Bullfrog.  By all accounts, he was one of those individuals that you find who is always helping people and that help make things grow through their enthusiasm for life.  Anyway, I understand he passed away some time prior to my getting a Mini or joining the THMMC.

The route itself follows Hwy. 66 up and around the Hanging Rock State Park area, kind of northwest of Winston-Salem.  There are some excellent roads in that area and the route was a favorite of Bullfrog to lead a run on.  As you’ll note later (if you read far enough), I didn’t really get aggressive this year.  But I remember from last year that it is one of the more technical roads I’ve been on in my Mini, with a good number of switchbacks, s-curves, etc.  So, I’m going to go ahead and give it 4 out of 5 howls.  May have to re-run it sometime on my own and see if it might be worthy of a 4.5.

Bullfrog Run

The run also marked a milestone for me.  In 2008, the First Annual Bullfrog Run was the first Mini event I attended with the THMMC (or anyone else for that matter).  I had the Mini for about a month and a half at that point.  So, it marked my one year anniversary of actually motoring with the THMMC. (more…)

So I ran across this story in our paper the other day about a bill(HB67) that is winding its way through the NC General Assembly.  It would change the law about the display of registration plates (aka license plates) to mandate that a license plate frame cannot cover the month or year stickers.  No problem there.  But it also mandates that the state name cannot be covered.

This would be a problem for my Mini as my frame covers the state name.

Outlaw this license plate bracket!!!!

Except for the mods I made to paint it to match my Mini, this is the “standard” frame that came with the Mini when I purchased it from Flow Mini.

Over the past couple days I’ve been watching other vehicles to see what they have.  Just eyeballing things, looks to me like about 40-50% of vehicles have license plate brackets.  Of those, probably around 90% are like mine in that they cover the state name.  And I’d probably say that well over half of them are like mine in that they were provided by the dealer where the vehicle was purchased from.

I don’t know how many vehicles are registered in NC - I’ll rough guess around 4 million.  If I’m right on that and my eyeball survey is consistent throughout the state, that would make about 1.5 million license plate brackets illegal.

And I’m not sure, I suppose the market would respond ok, but when I was looking for license plate brackets before doing my mod, I don’t recall there being many options available that didn’t cover the state name.

The bill has been passed by the House and sent over to the Senate where it has been assigned to the Committee on Transportation (bill history).

So I ran across this article tonight with the sad news that Dave Arneson has passed away.  Arneson was one of the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons.  This comes just over a year after Gary Gygax, another of the co-creators passed away.  I wrote about Gygax and briefly touched on the D&D experience of my youth back then.

I hope Dave is resting in peace now and to him also, thanks for the great times.

So, from one of my mailing lists I got this link to the Conficker War Room on the Wired.com web site.  It must be some sign of my geekiness that I am quite literally about about to ROFL.  I especially liked the need for a deadlier graphic.  Anyway, I wanted to preserve this gem and let any stray geek wandering by know about it.

Readers may recall that last fall I had an incident in the Mini when I ran into a deer close by my house.  That resulted in my bonnet (hood) being replaced along with a few trim pieces and one of my headlights.  The work was finally done in late November.  That meant it would be February before the paint was properly “cured”.  So - no wax for the bonnet, no Hydro, and no stripes installation.  So, the Mini had to suffer through the winter with a plain (chili) red bonnet.

Back in February we had a nice warm weekend and I was able to put some Epic wax down on the bonnet and surrounding panels and the bumper.  I did discover during that process that there was some paint overspray on the bumper from when the bonnet was repainted.  I’m hoping it will come off whenever I can invest in a good random orbiter polisher.  Fortunately, the red matches, so you can only tell by touch or getting at the right angle.

So I had been trying to decide what to do about stripes.  The first issue was that I want to add some boot stripes.  After playing around with The GIMP some, I had created some previews of different styles and decided I want to try a double pinstripe format.  The original stripes had black pinstripes along the edges, but I wanted to get the Mini to all red and white wherever possible (black being a necessary evil to the NCSU red and white colors).

I’d been looking at some stripes on the Aesthetic Creations web site, but the pinstripes were kind of big (1/4 inch).  My wife described them as “boy racerish” and I tend to agree.  The other problem was that the stripes themselves, both bonnet and boot, would run well over $100 and I’d probably be looking at new Cooper S badging on the boot as well. (more…)