Part of the transition to my new job involves a whole new kind of commute. My old commute to Medscape involved a trip to NYC (right near Madison Square Garden, as a matter of fact). That one was car to train, train to Grand Central, subway to Times Square, subway to Penn Station, walk to office. Door to Door: 90 minutes.
Whenever I tell people -- particularly people who are familiar with the geography of the New York suburbs -- about my new commute, they uniformly say something clever and pithy. Something like, "Ewwwwww....." Yes, there is a load of traffic on occasion, but on average, my door to door time is pretty much one hour and ten minutes. Not bad.
I'll admit that it's a totally different kind of commute. If you look to the left hand column, you'll see a total slow down in the number and frequency of new books read. All that train time when I read books...gone.
But there has been one HUGE benefit. I've decided to treat myself to something special. Last week, I took delivery on a MINI Cooper Convertible! Yes, it's everything it's cracked up to be. I'm having a blast driving it back and forth to work. For those of you in the Mini Cooper "cult", here are the particulars:
- MINI Cooper Convertible
Hyper Blue/Black Top
Black Bonnet Stripes
Premium Package
Cold Weather Package (Hey, it's NY!)
CVT Automatic
Chromeline Exterior and Interior
Nav. system
iPod Adapter (beats the hell out of my old cassette adapter)
Pictures to come.
It's just fun to drive. As I've plunged deeper and deeper into the online MINI community, I've learned a lot about my car, both pre-purchase and post. It's a great example of owners helping other owners and MINI has done a good job of using the Net to stoke that community (I'll try to post soon about why I think they are doing one of the best marketing jobs on the Web). One observation about that community...Given my previous open posting about my product predilictions, I have to wonder how many people fall into the intersection of Apple, TiVO, MINI ownership. It seems like there's a certain techy, outsider, design sensibility that's shared across those brands, don't you think?
....
OK, I'm a geek.
i want i want i want... and for a different reason than all of the above. push the button on your keyfob and the top pops in 20 seconds. just time enough to unbuckle two kids from their double strollers, lift them, and plop them into their car seats in back... am i dreaming or what?
Posted by: enoch choi | June 14, 2005 at 01:58 AM
I live in northern Canada and will be purchasing a mini for my wife's 40th b-day. It will be an S and it will have the cold weather package. What I would like ot know is feedback form those witht he convertible model, how cool are those winter commutes????
Please send feedback [email protected] as I am on th efnece but need ot comit ot the purchase in the upcoming days.
Posted by: gary | September 19, 2007 at 10:52 AM