Come motor with me.

Today we participated in the PittStop MINI Club meetup at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix. 140 MINIs travelled parade style from the West End Overlook to Schenley Park.

We were one of last cars to arrive because there was a major accident on the most direct route, leaving us to backtrack almost all the way home so that we could take a detour. Here's Mark posing in front of a fog covered Pittsburgh skyline. We took a family photo as well, which I'll post when I get it from the photographer.



One of the coordinators instructed us that this would be a challenging drive, since we would be running red lights and stop signs. We even had a sheriff's escort. And while it wasn't quite as treacherous as driving in Pittsburgh snow, it was still pretty harrowing.

See those people in the right lane? They were none too happy with us. In fact, one of the other coordinators risked his own MINI by using it as a barrier to block the people in the right lane so that we could all remain together. As we passed by him, he was exchanging f-bombs with one of the non-MINI drivers. Yikes.



Lauren keeping it cool under pressure and the scorching sun.



Once we safely arrived in Oakland, we hit another obstacle: gridlock. We sat in traffic for a long time before we finally made it into the park.



After we got settled into our spot, we took in the sights around us.



The MINI show was located on the 18th turn, so we could easily watch the race cars speed down the track.



There were all kinds of different vintage cars in the race...



...and thousands of cars on display. I wish I could have gotten more photos (especially of the Volkswagon show - Beetles and Buses as far as the eye could see!), but it was just way too hot to walk around. So we just stayed close to the MINIs.



Boot to boot.



I was surprised that there were hardly any highly customized or vintage MINIs at the show. This green one stood out because of it's unique fog light covers.



Oxygen Blue is my favorite MINI color. Unfortunately, it was discontinued in 2010. I was excited to get not one but two Oxygen Blues in this shot.



Despite the intense heat, it was still a great experience, which I hope will become one of our regularly scheduled activities in summers to come.