No, I haven’t become a spokesperson for a car dealership again! Rob and I have a new resident in the garage, although saying goodbye to the car she replaced was not easy! You may recall last year at almost exactly this time, we found a MINI convertible online and bought it the same day. Gently used despite her age (2005) and mileage (now just over 100k), we loved this little periwinkle blue convertible and seized every day there was to put the top down and let the wind wreck our hair.
 
Last month on our trip to the BC interior, we found ourselves cheating on Little Blue just a bit. My sister Cindy was selling her red Cooper S (with an extra gear and supercharged engine, it has just a bit more oomph), which is one year younger than our MINI and has about 30,000 fewer kilometres on the odometer. We decided to take our chances on letting our lovely little blue MINI go and bought Cindy’s. 
 

 
As luck would have it, we have relatives who were looking for a car just like Little Blue. We sold it to them – knowing full well that she just got a sparkling bill of health – and we know they’ll be as happy with her as we were. (I can’t imagine passing off a vehicle to family if you knew there was something wrong, can you?) I’ve even suggested a name: Winnie. They had a dog named Winston (a lovely Corgi) and who can resist Winnie the Mini? Honestly!
 
So there we go: there’s a new MINI in our garage (new to us) and it’s adorable. In fact, just the other day, as we made our way down the Pat Bay Highway and into Victoria, a man honked his horn next to us. I looked up from my phone (I was passenger, obviously) and an older gent driving a Jaguar gave us the big “thumbs up” and a smile.
 
It’s funny how many people smile at you when you’re driving a cute little convertible. It’s just a happy car! And now that we have the same colour MINI that we had when Lauren was a kid (although it was a hard top with a Union Jack on the roof) it’s just a little bit happier. As for a name…maybe Chili? ‘Cause some days with the top down and 17C, as it was earlier in June-uary (as they call a cool month here), it was chilly indeed!
 
Tomorrow – here comes summer vacation! Where our travels take us, and why that’s giving me a bit of trouble, morality-wise.