After that I am back in CA for a few days before going to Europe for a week to visit our London office, and a side trip to Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam to do some work with them. I should get a good look at the upcoming Killzone 2 for PS3 while I am there.

The MINI just turned 68,000 miles and is going strong. A few months before the Inspection 2 so I am sure I will have something to say about that nearer the time. Until then, happy motoring!

I pull out, he comes over and now we’re side by side. I wait for him to accelerate past but he doesn’t so now I have to drive crazy to get by him (knowing full well that he will also accelerate) or slow the hell down to come in behind him. It’s a nice ‘reward’ for being courteous.

I’m sure most of the time the other driver just isn’t even thinking about the situation, and there are other times when they are just being a jerk, but it winds me up.

So tonight I’m in the left lane of two at the traffic light, next light is a left turn for me. I see the Acura come up behind, pause, and then come out around me to the right. My first thought is that she wants to go straight on at the next light. Light changes and she’s off, engine squealing. I don’t usually bother but I’ve been pissy all week and I’m frankly disgusted that someone thinks an MDX is faster than a MINI.

I catch her during the change from 2nd to 3rd gear (I bet most of you would still be in first!), cruise by her and am at the light 10-15 seconds before her; she pulls up behind me.

I don’t get it. I drive very conservatively, no crazy quick starts, no challenging other vehicles, and yet time and time again a car will pull this crap. Frankly I’m getting tired of it.

So as much as I hate to buy yet another mount, looks like I need something. I know Ian has a convertible and an iPhone - what do you do? RB - you have an iPhone, too. And anyone else care to say what they use?

btw, the picture is of a mount sold by MountGuys.com.

Got down to the Valley floor and there was a wall of grey 10 miles ahead. A huge storm cloud tilted in the sky, the left hand side tipping all the way to the desert floor. To the right, a veil of darkness. Hmm.. this was going to be interesting.

Inside the cloud it started to hail, giant balls of hail banging on the glass. The wind was fierce and visibility went down to maybe 20 feet. A lot of people had pulled off onto the hard shoulder but the storm wasn’t moving and I figured I could be stick there for ages. So I kept going, but at 20 mph or so, watching the white line real close. Yeah, I had the camera for a while but soon realised I was in enough danger as it was, no need for more.

Finally got outside the storm but it looked filthy in the sky in all directions,. A few miles later, a large brown curtain masked the road ahead. No rain this time but the storm winds had whipped up tons of sand and dirt and for a few seconds it was almost total brown-out. Scary stuff.

I was glad to get home and, I thought, get to enjoy experiencing the storm from under our patio roof (I have an extreme weather fetish) but the storm stayed to the west and the north of us. Naturally, I had washed the car on Sunday and now on Friday it was all dirty again.

It was also the first time for me to try out my new Anywhere Travel Companion, an aviation and street GPS unit. Maybe more on the latter in a future post.

Most likely a stuck needle in the tank (do modern cars still work that way?) but then yesterday I was driving around town and noticed that the needle was way below what it should have been, but after about 15 minutes it finally went up to what I thought was the proper mark. Hopefully just a transient issue or am I going to have raid the piggy bank for some repairs.

Talking of piggy back, I’m only about 3 months away from my Inspection II being due - I don’t even want to know what Brecht will charge for that.

And in other news from the future, I am sure everyone has received details of the room rate for AMVIV 6 in March ‘09; I think we’ll be at that, too.

Test drove a MINI Cooper S over the weekend and it was aight. I expected more and the interior was fugly. Also saw a couple of REAL MINIs on the freeway and that was the coolest thing I’d seen all month.

@xxx don’t make me set my MINI-crazed friends on ya

@tendancer MINI-crazed enough to pay a $3K premium on top of the MSRP?

@xxx only 3K ? I remember when it was 5 or 6! I paid MSRP for mine.

@tendancer The S I test drove would have come out to $35K. That’s an R32!!

1. My antenna is wired to the CD changer in the boot and, because I didn’t know how to wire it through the panel, the wire comes through the back of the car, between the two front seats and the antenna sits on the dashboard. Nothing metallic there so for the longest time it has been sitting on a mat designed for things not to move. And it has worked great for almost three years but all of a sudden it has no grip at all. The pad moves across the dash in tight corners, which it never did, and the antenna doesn’t grip the pad like it used to. So now it’s flying off into the corner or the floor at all times.
2. Despite there being oodles of channels, 95% of my listening is to UPop, a channel dedicated to “world pop music” but is largely UK and US pop music. I love it for the UK content. But this week I tuned in and heard 3 Coldplay tunes in a row which made me wonder what was going on. Next I heard a jingle that said it was “30 days of Coldplay” - 30 days of Coldplay?? Even Chris Martin himself once said he was boring to listen after too long, who on earth wants 30 days of it? And the few times I’ve tuned in, I think I’ve only heard about 6 different songs, though of course with Coldplay who can tell the difference between them anyway? So now I need a new channel for a month. So far I have switched to Fred which is a “history of alternative music”. They have good spells - of new wave/80s pop - and bad spells - punk and obscure US bands from the 80s I’ve never heard of. I just hope UPop comes back after this, as I miss my UK pop fix.

So then I was reading that Top Gear gave it some kind of best car award so what happened? Did they subsequently have a big change of mind ? Or What?

More I see them, the more I like them.