East Coast Mini E meet up; Part Deux!

The second Mini E East coast meet up is set for Sunday, November 8th from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. We will again be meeting at my restaurant, Nauna's Bella Casa, at 148 Valley Road, Montclair, NJ 07042. Reserve the date! More details will follow.

East Coast Mini-E gathering was a success!

Today's Mini-E gathering was a great success. I played host at my restaurant in Montclair, Nauna's Bella Casa. We had nine pioneers attend, plus Marian Hawryluk, a representative from Mini USA. She also came in a Mini-E so we had nine of them parked out in front of the restaurant. There would have been ten, but unfortunately one of the cars is in for service. Luckily the owners, John Rathgeb and Alan Chadrjian live on the block behind Nauna's (crazy coincidence) and could walk to the gathering. It was really nice to meet up with other "E" drivers and talk about the issues we have had as well as how much we all love the cars. It was especially nice of Marian to come. She wasn't obligated to be here, but chose to come to answer any questions we might have and to listen to our stories and complaints. There were some complaints, as much as we all love the cars, but most of them were not directly related to the car itself, they were more about the lack of a two-way communication conduit between the people at Mini and us. There was one particular car that has been in service 5 times already and Marian promised to find out what was going on with it and get back to the owners, as they have barely been able to drive the car since they got it. Nobody else at the event had encountered anything like what they have seen and have been racking up the miles for the past two months and driving emission free. I think problems aside we all really love the cars and that we made sure she knew that. We had a nice lunch of fresh mozzarella salad, fried calamari, hotsy totsy shrimp, penne vodka & chicken francese. I think everyone left full and very happy with how the day went. My staff later told me that while we were having our meeting, people kept walking in the restaurant and asking them what was going on with all the cars outside. It looked really cool seeing all the Mini-E's parked in the lot all next to each other. I have to give props to Don Young. He came here from Shelter Island, NY, which is all the way out on Long Island, about 130 miles away. He had to stop halfway at Stu Greenberg's and charge up. Then charge up when he got to Montclair (at Sandy Bondorowsky's) and then halfway home again at Stu's. It must have taken him 18 hours for the round trip, that's dedication! I want to thank Marian Hawryluk, Don Young, Sandy Bondorowsky, Chris Neff, Paul Heitmann, Ken Barbour, David Miller, Michael Graham, John Rathgeb & Alan Chadrjian for coming. I definitely plan on doing this again, probably in 3 or 4 months and hopefully we'll have an even larger group for that one.

Mini-E East Coast get together planned!

Many of the people participating in the Mini-E trial lease program have been communicating online via the Mini-E facebook groups and through blogs like this one to share our experiences, our problems and the excitement we have share about this amazing vehicle. The problem is, other than the one event sponsored by Mini for each the East coast and West coast participants, we rarely get to see or talk to each other in person, and I think most of us would like to do just that. I figured that since I own a restaurant in Montclair NJ, which geographically is an ideal location, I should organize an event. Montclair is only 12 miles west of NYC, and is within 50 miles of most of the NJ participants other than about 15 or so in Southern NJ. They could make it here, but would need a full recharge to get home and that might be difficult. There are two participants with charge boxes in Montclair, but I'm not sure of their availability. You can go to the website for Mini-E charger sharing at: http://www.waterway4.com/mini-e/ if you need to charge up on the way somewhere. We are going to meet at Nauna's Bella Casa at 148 Valley Road in Montclair, NJ 07042 at 1:00pm on Saturday, August 22nd. I know there are at least 25 participants that are within a 50 mile range of Montclair so hopefully we can get a good group here. A few have already confirmed so it's definitely a go, rain or shine. We can all sit at a big table, have lunch and talk about the first few months of driving with zero emissions. I'll reserve a bunch of parking spaces so we can all park next to each other for some great pictures. I also told our local newspaper about it and they plan to stop by sometime. It would be great if we could get someone from Mini to come by also, I'll make sure they know the event is going on and leave it up to them if someone can stop by. Leave me a message if you plan to come!