It's practically a requirement for Mini Cooper owners to have seen (or own) the 2003 movie, The Italian Job, starring Charlize Theron and Mark Wahlberg. In the film, the beautiful stars are seen tearing around in a fleet of Minis, safe-cracking and cutting up in one the best caper flicks of all time.Maybe that's where we got the bug — not the VW kind. In any case, Retired Guy and I have lusted after Minis for years. Finally, following a five-week gestation period for the Mini that included production in Oxford, England and a trip by boat to a New Jersey distribution center, we took our new Mini home from Warwick's Inskip dealership on Tuesday. We are still counting her toes and fingers to make sure she's really ours.
About the only downside to the happy arrival is that right now I happen to be doing the reporting for an upcoming Projo.com feature on the Top Ten Ice Cream Places around here. That means Retired Guy and I have been motoring (that's Mini-speak for driving) from Watch Hill, R.I. to Marion, Mass., sampling ice cream cones on the go.While we had his old Escort or my Subaru, we thought nothing of eating ice cream in the car, but now? You'd better believe not! Even if we were willing to risk a gooey spot, the car is a standard, and we're still adjusting to that. We're not about to shift with a cone in hand.
I'm sure Charlize faced the same dilemma — and maybe it's no coincidence that right after the Italian Job, she put on 30 pounds to make her follow-up movie, Monster. It must have been that great Italian gelato.
(Sneak preview: This is Cranberry Bog, from Somerset Creamery, Somerset, Mass.)
