Micro cars at Larz Anderson Museum

Owning a Mini Cooper seems to have unleashed a craving in us to see even smaller cars -- cars such as these otherworldly-looking micro classics, which were gathered today for a show on the grounds of the Larz Anderson Car Museum in Brookline, Mass.

We recruited nephew Will, 9, who is a junior car head himself, to spend the afternoon looking at dozens of cars that are so small that they make our Mini CHEEKY look like an SUV. I rode in one car -- a miniscule yellow Fiat checker taxi -- whose proud owner told me it gets 80 miles per gallon of gas. (I didn't tell him that I've heard it said about Fiats that the letters in the name stand for "Fix it again, Tony.")

While Micro Mini Day happens just once a year, the Anderson historic car barn museum is less than an hour's drive from Providence, and it hosts unusual car events on Saturdays through October. Next Saturday is Extinct Auto Day, for example, followed by Triumph and Miata Days. The last event this year is Studebaker Day Oct. 26.

Mini Nation: Fun and games in NH

Ever since we ordered our Mini (vanity plate CHEEKY) back in April, Retired Guy and I knew we'd go to the Minis On Top rally run up Mount Washington. Who could resist the idea of hundreds of gaily accessorized Mini Coopers caravaning up the highest mountain in the northeast? At 6,288 feet, the mountain's height matched the date of this year's (the sixth annual) Minis On Top: 6-28-08.

And we did have fun. Along with 215 other goofy Mini owners, we gawked at all the other interesting color combinations and car graphics, beginning with those in the caravan of Minis that started for the North Country from Area 51 off Route 93 just north of Concord. The Minis followed three different routes to get to Gorham, the town just north of Mount Washington where we spent the night. The next morning, everyone drove down to the Loon ski area parking lot in Lincoln for a meet that featured contests in various categories such as Best Sound System, Dirtiest, Cleanest, and Best Overall Car.

RG was hopeful he'd get a nod from the judges for his roof decal of the Rhode Island state flag, but he lost out to a very flashy number: a gull-wing door modification of a Mini that captured everyone's attention and took two separate Best awards.

But the most fun of all was watching the entries in a Mini Driving Skills (O)lympics. (The organizers weren't allowed to officially call it Olympics, because of copyright issues.) Dozens of hopeful Mini drivers waited in line to take their cars through an obstacle course of orange traffic cones, starting off by picking up an apple from the ground and then driving a short distance to balance it carefully on top of a traffic cone.

The course was much harder than it looked, and it was fun to watch the most macho entrants rev their engines only to stall out repeatedly. One guy in particular (a fellow Rhode Islander) came in dead last while more precise drivers — especially a woman from New York City — maneuvered far more delicately to place close to the top of the order.

"Next year," said Retired Guy. "I need to practice."

After all that excitement, the actual climb to the top of Mount Washington (in heavy fog) came as almost an afterthought. The best part of the Mini vacation weekend was meeting new friends Jeff, Monica and Catherine, with whom we've already planned to enter as a team in the Mini Trivia Contest next year.

Mini vacation: 215 Mini Coopers climb Mount Washington in the MOT (Minis On Top) rally

The Ice Cream Job

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.)

It's an online world: RIX to move to Projo

Big news: In a few weeks, Rhode Island Explorer will move to a new home on the Providence Journal's online Projo.com website. After 28 years writing features for newsprint, I'm now writing electronically. It's a new era, and certainly a happy one for me. When the switch is pulled, sometime in June, this site will link to Projo. In the meantime, stay tuned right here.

Although I well understand many people's preference for "a newspaper I can hold in my hand," the times have changed, for better or worse, and I've come to believe that there are terrific positives to the online world — positives that, on balance, far outweigh the negatives. A horse and buggy is a nice memory — but would you really rather have one than a car? (More on that subject later. Here's Retired Guy with his new pride and joy.)


Anyway, how could I not love a job that calls for me to find the best ice cream places in Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts? One of my regular features on the new beat will be a weekly Top 10, beginning with ice cream. So read on — online!

Mom's Camry plays it cool at 10 Prime

Last night, I went to one of the coolest places in Providence in one of the uncoolest cars in the world: my mother's '86 Toyota Camry. The light blue sedan has spent most of its 22 years in my parents' commodious garage, emerging occasionally for short trips mostly to charge up its battery, which may be original to the car. The Toyota is the car my family uses when any of our "real" cars is out of service for one reason or another, the reason in this case being that Retired Guy sold his car, more quickly than either of us expected, and WE ARE GETTING A MINI COOPER!

Regular readers of this blog already know that RG and I have been members of the Mini cult for some time. The twin events of coming into a small inheritance and seeing my good friend Gail snag a coveted new model, the Mini Clubman, pushed us over the edge. We ordered a basic model, Sparkling Silver, standard shift, with a black roof and Redwood Lounge leather seats. We are going to call it CHEEKY (that's to be its vanity plate). RG has spent countless hours on the incredibly interactive MiniUSA website playing with Cheeky's comely configurations, and many more hours out in the garage preparing for the new arrival. (Our excuse for this Mini extravagance is the money we'll save on gas: Gail tells me her Mini gets 40 miles per gallon.)

Within 24 hours of uploading our ad, AutoTrader had found us a buyer for RG's '97 Ford Escort — and that is how last night I found myself in the blue Camry pulling up in front of one Providence's coolest restaurants — Ten Prime Steak & Sushi — where I was meeting my cool friend Charlie for drinks. Right behind me, up pulls a gleaming black Mercedes. As you can imagine, the two parking valets were jockeying for position. "This is a very special car," I said to the lucky one. "You'll take good care of it, right?"


"Are you kidding? This is a great car," he enthused. I pointed out to him that the Camry is a soon-to-be classic, a powder puff with just 30,000 miles on it. He was impressed. Anybody can buy a Mercedes, but this car — well, it's priceless. "Thirty thousand miles!" he said, "I could drive it around the block that many times." (I hoped not — something might fall off.)

As we always do, Charlie and I had a great time catching up. We sat at the bar, nibbling on a Morris roll (shrimp tempura and crab) and Coho salmon nigiri, he with his Manhattan and I with my Sapphire Martini. The crowd was elbow-to-elbow, young (we guessed mostly 30s) and good-looking. And I just felt so cool knowing that my pumpkin Camry would soon turn into a fairy-tale Mini.

Mini Coopers in Providence . . .

It's a small world, isn't it? I see Minis everywhere — at home:

and on vacation . . .

Emperor's night out in Providence: Tazza blues

Is there in fact any live music on a Tuesday night in March in the Great Metropolis of Providence?
That was the question.
Normally, it would not be possible for me to even contemplate staying up late enough to find out the answer. But this week, with the time having sprung ahead and the weather clear and fine, I was ready to dance at (drum roll, please) 9:30 p.m. The only hurdle to actually going out at that hour was rousing Retired Guy from his comfortably horizontal position on the sofa, where he had been happily watching non-stop TV coverage of La Scandale Spitzer — or, en espanol, Escandolo.

But somewhat reluctantly, he did accept, after it was pointed out to him that while the Governor of New York would have had to pay more than $4,000 for a night on the town with an elegant, educated, 3- or maybe even 4-diamond companion, he — the Emperor of Providence — would be getting it for free.

We found a parking spot without any problem, and — and this would prove to be the highlight of the evening — spotted a Mini Cooper in the new Nightfire red color, which we decided was far superior to the old Chili red, which seems — to me, at least — to scream "mid-life crisis."
Then we entered Tazza, the artsy and contemporary cafe-cum-coffeehouse where (I had noted on a lunch-time walk about town) Tuesday is Blues Night.

Well! It turned out to be a free open mike type of thing, rather than an actual band. The gray-bearded man who was playing some kind of noise on an incredibly jangling stringed instrument had it so close to the microphone that it actually hurt my left ear. RG immediately turned off his hearing aid, which solved the matter for him, but we obviously had to leave having barely removed our coats.
Still not sleepy after we got home, I went to the internet to google "eardrum damage" while the Emperor of Providence returned to his couch and TV, where David Letterman (looking considerably grayer than he had when I'd last stayed up to watch the Late Show) was delivering the "Top Ten Messages Left on Eliot Spitzer's Answering Machine."

Did Spitzer have to deal with bad music and acoustic injuries to timpanic membranes while entertaining his glittering girlfriends at the Mayflower Hotel?
I think not. But then, you get what you pay for, don't you?