Yesterday was tire swap day for the Mini and today was bath day. Even broke out the Tire & Trim Care liquid and shined up the the black trim that runs around around the lower part of the car.
Ten days ago the weather had warmed up enough to go ahead and put the summer tires on the Miata, now it is even warmer and I took the snows off the Mini and put its regular all-season tires back on. That order seems a bit backwards to me, but that is the way it has to be because we don’t have dedicated snow tires for both cars.
We don’t need snow tires for the Miata because it doesn’t get driven enough to warrant the extra spending. Plus the mild winters here snow-wise mean that the borrowed Mini all-seasons suffice for taking the Miata out for an occasional drive to keep from having to do a winterized storage procedure.
Shortly after moving here we wanted to take a trip to Washington state to see the family. But just before we left to go, almost 2 years ago to the day from the present, the Mini started acting up. It was misfiring and unfortunately the local place we took it to couldn’t get to it until after our scheduled departure, so we had to rent a car.
Fast forward to this year and Donna’s friend for life Sally Lewis has retired from the State Department and has bought a home in Santa Fe, NM. She would like us to come down and help her settle in to the new home.
The Mini has had a Brake Warning Light on in the dash for a bit, but we thought we should get it looked at before taking the 1,300 mile drive to the New Mexico capitol city. We took the Lady Bug to our friends at Emmett’s yesterday morning so they would have a couple of days to sort it out. We got the call last evening that it was going need some new front brake pads and sensors. No big deal, those are the original brakes and at 44k that seemed about right. But the big bugaboo were the calipers, both sides were showing very uneven wear meaning that one side was sticking. These were the parts that they couldn’t get locally, so the had to order them and they won’t be here until Monday next.
In 2019 the Mini was all we had here at the time, this year we do have the Miata as a back up, but we don’t want take it because it is nearing winter. Our travels will take us through several mountain ranges and ultra high performance summer tires do not go together well with cold temperatures and any kind of winter precipitation. Rather than put off the trip, we opted to do what we did in 2019, rent a car.
Thursday is grocery shopping day for us. As usual we take the Mini so that no one has to ride home with any groceries on their lap
On the way to Fred Meyer she went to put some hand cream on and realized her small tube of the stuff wasn’t in the the bag. We spent the next few minutes guessing as to where the tube of hand cream might be. Back home on her desk? In the smaller alternate yellow knapsack? Maybe it was in dedicated Geocaching knapsack?
When we got back home, she started all the unpacking and I headed back out in the Miata to fill up the car with gas. As I backed out of the garage I head a cracking noise. I looked back and saw several dead leaves had blown into the garage and figured they were the source of the noise.
When I returned and opened the garage door I noticed something else on the garage floor along with the leaves that I didn’t notice before. So I stopped the Miata and got out to see what it was.
I found the hand cream.
While standing around in garage getting ready to go grocery shopping this morning Donna’s knapsack had slid off the the trunk of the Miata onto the floor. She picked it up and we got in the Mini to head to Fred Meyer. The tube must have popped out and slid under the Miata where I ran over it as I went back out.
While we are avid consumers of HGTV and its bevy of remodeling shows, neither of us are enamored with an open concept. Nor are we lusting after a lot of the newer “high end” finished drooled over by many. The current House of Bogardi is 57 years old and somewhere in its the past, some updating has been done. The kitchen and bathrooms were done sometime in their lifespan, from the looks, sometime near the turn of the century time frame.
And while we are pretty happy with the way most things look, there are a few small items that we would like to address. The first thing we want to improve on are the bathroom vanities in both the on suite and the other main floor bath. They are dull pale yellow color with dark tops and oil rubbed bronze fixtures and while they looked OK when the walls were beige, they don’t really go that well with the green and blue we have painted the rooms. Plus they are a might too big for the smaller mid century sized rooms.
Another thig we want to do is change out 2 of the 3 toilets. The main flor bath has a newer chair height unit while the on suite and lower floor bath’s have older lower seats. Considering that when we redid the bathroom back in Aiken we put the taller chair toilets in, whenever either of us uses the lower toilets those couple of inches feel like a steep drop.
Today we took step one, drove over to Home Depot bought a vanity, facet set and wall light fixture for the blue main floor bath. The vanity is gray with a white top and because the cabinet handles are brushed nickel we also bought a faucet set and wall light in the same finish.
I was careful to measure the depth and width of the vanity to make sure it would fit in the back hatch of the Mini with the seats down. It looked like as long as there was was not too much packing material around it we would be fine. When we got to the store and dragged the vanity box out from the shelf it was under, it looked awfully big, especially in the height department. So I went up front to the Customer Service Desk to ask if they had a tape measure I could borrow. Went back and measured the box, depth 21″, width 33″ and height 38″. Strolled out to the car and had plenty for the depth, pretty close to enough for the width and height.
I returned the tape measure and we put the three items on a cart and headed for the check out. when I got to the car and stuffed our vanity in the back of the Ladybug it went right in width and depth-wise, but the height was fine at the bottom, but 21″ straight up the box was hitting the slanted hatch. I sort of forgot that the box was three dimensional. The hatch would come down and almost close, but even moving the front seats forward slightly, it wouldn’t close. So I moved the seats all the way back again and bungee corded the hatch almost shut. Because the vanity consumed nearly all the hatch area, Donna had to ride home sharing her half of front seat with the boxes of the faucet and wall light.
Some time a couple three weeks from now I’ll see how hard it is to remove the old vanity and backsplash and put the new one in.
We have the 2-bike version of the Saris Bones rack that is perfect for the Miata and carrying our road bikes (or in a pinch the tandem), but now we also have a Mini and mountain bikes. Because of the plastic roof small lip spoiler on the Mini there is no place to hook what would be the top straps of the Bones without risking breaking that plastic piece. After doing a bunch of online searching around the Mini Forums and not really finding anyone with a good work around, they just put the straps on ignoring the pressure on the lip, I was about to give up when I had an idea – a pool noodle.
I went to my favorite store, Amazon, and found the largest diameter noodle with the highest density and bought an Oodles Monster Jumbo Pool Noodle. When I got it, I cut it to the length of the width of the back window to try it out. I got the rack arms adjusted to get them parallel to the ground and braced the bottom legs on the bumper. I then lengthened the straps so I could get them hooked in the right spots. The top straps hooked in on top and the noodle was just right in keeping any pressure off the lip spoiler, the side straps hooked on the body of the door, not the glass, but the bottom straps would not reach the bottom of the hatch door. I think it might have worked without them, but I would probably get some longer ones for some enhanced security.
Seeing as I have never tried the mountain bikes with the Bones rack, now was the time. I went and got my MTB to put on spot closest to the car because it is the tallest. Because of the frame geometry the bike rested in a nose down attitude, unlike the level look of the road bikes. The frame tubes are rectangular, not round, they didn’t rest in the cradle nicely, but with the three loops tightened it was held in tightly. I then grabbed Donna’s size small framed bike (mine is a large) and it would not go over the rack arms, there just wasn’t a large enough opening in the frame. Now what?
My first thought was returning to a roof rack, we used to have one that was universal and removable, so I researched the genuine Mini rack first. This has the benefit of being designed for the car. The roof rack base system is a couple hundred dollars, the rack itself is about $150 and you need two of them, so this would cost roughly $500 to out fit the car. I think this is the best way to accomplish this and I an order would already be placed except for the negatives. Firstly, this would be mounted on the car at all times generating wind noise, slightly decreasing gas mileage and getting all covered in bugs. Some of this could be eliminated by removing the bike rack section, leaving the base, but this increases time and trouble when you do want to transport the bikes. Secondly, there is the issue of having to lift the bikes up onto the roof, I am tall enough, but my MTB weighs 35 pounds, and that is a lot of unwieldy to hoist up that far making the chance for a mistake of scratching the car or dropping the bike a consideration.
Option #2 was a trailer hitch mounted rack. This option comes in around $400 if I do the work of installing the $200 trailer hitch. You have to remove the rear bumper which according to folks on the Mini Forums only takes an hour to 1-1/2 which translates into around 4 to 5 hours in real life. The pluses are that you only need to lift the bikes a foot off the ground, it is easy to put on and take off and you have zero chance of shearing everything off the roof when you drive into your garage forgetting about the bikes. The big negative is that the trailer hitch receiver comes out of middle of the bumper and you lose your back up light/rear fog lamp assembly. No one on the forums mentioned anything about whether the car throws a code because of this, I would think with the electrics being on a CANBUS system there might be some issue.
The third possibility is a variation on the roof rack, a pair of Talon suction cup mounts from SeaSucker. This option costs about $500. This is the 21st century version of that original universal and removable rack as it is easy on and off, but the hoisting the bikes up issue still remains, although slightly easier because you get to remove the front wheel. But the removed front wheels now have to be stored inside the car, that is unless you want to spend another $250 for a pair of suctioned wheel mounts again for the roof. Other downsides are the trust issue of just suction cups alone holding your bikes on the roof, the extra care required to keep the car paint clean and unscratched, plus the ease of installation translates into ease of theft…
The fourth, and most radical, option is to just sell the Mini and buy a Jeep so we can get one of those bike racks that fit on the spare tire, but then again that probably wouldn’t fit Donna’s small framed MTB. Though a trailer hitch rack on the Jeep would be perfect. Now I just need to go start a GoFundMe site for that Wrangler…
On New Year’s Day, we ran a quick errand to Home Depot and on the way back we stopped at Albertsons for a couple of items. As we were walking towards the store from the parking lot, a lady pushing her cart out of the store, waved us over and asked, “What year is your Mini?” When I told her it was a 2013, she said, “Oh, too bad, I have a car cover for a 2007 Mini and I was going to ask if you wanted it.” I told her that in fact it would fit our car as the 2nd generation Minis ran from 2007 to 2014. She said, “Well, I’m giving it away because I sold the car a while ago and it is just taking up space in my garage. Do you want it?” Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we said, “Sure, we’ll take it.” She then said, “I live just up the street, when can you come get it?” We said, “We are just picking up a couple items. We could be there in 15 minutes?” She then explained where she lived and she wasn’t kidding about the just up the street thing, it was literally a half mile along the same cross road as the store…
After leaving her promising to see her in a few minutes, maybe two steps closer to Alberstons front door another lady comes up and says, “Did you just get out of that Mini?” We nod in the affirmative and she says, “How do you like it?” We both launch into how much we like the car. She said, “I have a older Ford Escape and I have trouble seeing out of it when trying to back up especially.” She was about Donna’s height, if not maybe a little shorter, so Donna told her about selling our bigger car, just to get this to be able to see more. So Donna said, “Would you like come sit in it?” “Sure,” she said. So we walked back over to the car and she sat in it and marveled at the view. She said she saw one at a used car lot and was going to go down with her husband to see about buying it.
We finally got to go inside and buy what we came for. After leaving there we stopped at lady number one’s house. When we finally got home we unloaded a step ladder, 2 gallons of distilled water and a car cover for the Ladybug.
