Don't Worry, I'm Still Around

It's crazy to think it's been almost a year since my last post here on dcMINI. But it has and it not that there has been a lack of MINI related things going on. In fact there are plenty.

I will say that I have not been driving the MINI all that much, being winter in Chicago. I don't think I even dove the MINI for all of December and a good portion of November. I know, I really wanted to but I have a really good excuse. I was recently married and much of my focus was on that. We had a Parisian wedding! And it was fantastic. We ended up doing it a bit differently by combining the honeymoon with our wedding but I really had a great time. We traveled to Madrid, Barcelona and then Paris, where we were married in a really cool old church. We dont have the pictures yet of the wedding day but here are some photos of the rest of the trip. Anyways.... that happened. I am still under 50K miles and the car has been doing ok. And by "ok" I mean there has been some issues I have dealt with. Nothing major but still worth mentioning.


Some of you who listen to the WWR podcast know that they remind us, almost weekly, to check the oil level on our cars. Fellow MINI owner Taylor was one of the first I had heard about having a problem with this. Apparently there was a slow oil leak from the oil pan gasket that eventually caused the engine to seize up. Not fun! Fortunately, he talked his way into getting the dealer to help out with replacing his engine but still, knowing that could happen to a very knowledgable guy scared me a little. I have since had my oil pan gasket and valve cover gasket replaced since they were starting to fail as well. It was just a precaution but worth doing as opposed to replacing an engine. This was back in September of 2010

Now, I have a little leak from the coolant line, probably a hose seal somewhere, but I have to have that checked out. Since the MINI is not my daily driver, it is not a priority to get this fixed asap, but I plan on getting it in in the next couple weeks.

Now to address the fact that I have not been posting as much as I would like. When I first started this blog, it seemed that everyone that wanted a voice could just start up a blog. Now I have noticed that that is not the case. There are a few of you still out there doing their thing but most are hitting up facebook. I am no exception. Although not all MINI related, my facebook handle is www.facebook.com/dcmini if you are ever interested in that. Friend me up and let me know you are a dcMINI reader.

Thanks for reading, and I'll try to post up here on more significant MINI stuff as they happen. :-)