IT’S A FAMILY Affair

Words and photos by Craig Nelson

Words by Craig Nelson, photos by author and Ian Rae

Wow, is this a dream? Nope, I just pinched myself! It’s taken months of planning, looking at routes, talking to friends, wondering what the full MINI Takes The States would be like, finding places to stay, finding a place for my dog Sam to stay, wondering if I should go (of course I should go), can I afford to go, I’m not going, hooray, I’m going. I’m ready to participate in MTTS 2016, an epic trip across the USA with nine hundred of my closest MINI friends (my MINI family), traveling 4,397 miles from ‘Track to Track’. Leaving Dundee, NY, I’m traveling with friends Tanya & Ian Loomis heading down to the famous Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina. As I’m swiftly turning from right to left and left to right on the 318 curves of this 11-mile stretch, I’m thinking back to 2011 when my grandmother (NANDY) and I bought our first MINI (Rutgrr). Who would have thought that that MINI

Track to Track with my MINI family

would open the door to so many fun outings, new friends and Nandy saying every morning as she looked out the window, “There’s our MINI, we should go for a ride” (and that’s just what we did). Our MINI was our life, it was all we thought about, even my license plate says MINI4EVR. Upon finishing our drive thru the Dragon we met up with another eight MINIs. As I’m taking a group photo in front of the Dragon Sculpture with all of these smiling and waving MINI owners, I think about the I LOVE LUCY episode “California, Here We Come,” with Lucy,Ethel, Desi, and Fred singing as they drive across the George Washington Bridge out of NY. As we leave the Dragon our group of two MINIs has grown to ten MINIs and we are singing our way to Atlanta, Georgia! I know Nandy would have loved to make this exciting trip so I brought her