[pblock]

While on vacation last week I saw the first Mini out and about on the road (as opposed to in the dealers' lot) since picking up my silk green Cooper in July. My wife and I spent a week motoring around Nova Scotia. We drove from upstate NY to Portsmouth, Maine, and took an overnight ferry to Yarmouth. From there we drove east to Halifax. Enroute, as we passed through Mahone Bay on Monday, Sept. 16, we saw a dark silver Cooper S parked beside the road.

From there we headed up to Cape Breton Island and had great fun driving the Cabot Trail. The road is made for a Mini, with lots of curves and grades. And it was pretty much deserted. We never had to pass a car the whole time. Our Mini was quite a hit everywhere we went. In Ingonish, someone sought us out in a restaurant and asked if a few days before we had been in Mahone Bay, hundreds of miles away. They saw us drive through town. But they never saw the dark silver S.

We took the land route home, around the Bay of Fundy and down the Maine coast. In Maine on Saturday, Sept. 21, we saw our second Mini. It was a yellow S heading the opposite direction an hour or so north of Camden. I flashed my lights, and the other driver waved.

Anyone out there belong to either of those Minis?

--Paul