The Tucker Stories

One hundred and seventy-five days ago, some {disfavorable term} person(s) stole Maggie, my cherished 2006 MINI Coopers S, right out of our garage.  Now, those days of gloom are gone.  Let me introduce you to my 2010 MINI Cooper S John Cooper Works and her name is Maggie, Too.

The best way to describe a burglary with car theft would be to imagine that you, your family and the family dog are walking along a wooded trail when, suddenly from nowhere, a crazed ATV comes blasting out of the woods directly towards your family.  Miraculously, you are able to get your family out of the way but, as the rider tears off, you see that the family dog has been run over and killed.  Though you’ve been blessed to protect your family, your heart is crushed with the death of your dog.  Pretty extreme but that’s the best way I can describe a burglary of your home and theft of the car, whilst sleeping in the house.

Yesterday was the day I’d scheduled with my dealer to take delivery of Maggie, Too.  Therefore, lost of paperwork would be required and I made doubly sure that I had all my forms.  I have to drive to Vogelweh, Germany to pick up the temporary German plates and then press on to the dealership for the 11:-00 appointment to pick up the car.  So, three hours after we pulled out of Kerkrade, NL we pulled into the parking lot of the Vogelweh Vehicle Registration.  And then found out that those damn Americans have taken Friday off after Thanksgiving!!  Engage panic mode.  If I don’t get this car today, I’ll have to reschedule and retry the six hour roundtrip next week.  Not a good plan at all.  So I call the dealership and they come up with an alternate plan to register Maggie, Too via the German national channels.  However, this means I’ll have to buy temporary German car insurance for ~€100.  Not real happy about that, however, that’ll be definitely less than the cost of fuel for driving back and forth.  Doing all of this is somewhat of a kabuki dance because I went to the registration office, got a number to be seen, and then found out that I needed to go downstairs to get the insurance card first.  Ohkay… The insurance guys do not take credit cards and the Nederland bank card doesn’t work for them.  Also, they’re not sure if they can take my NATO drivers license and ID.  I then had to cycle back upstairs, confirm that the IDs are OK get the insurance folks to start their paperwork.  So, Matt and I jog down to the nearest geldautomat (ATM).  Yes, we jogged because it’s just now 11:10 and the registration office closes at noon.  After getting the euros, we hustle back to the insurance office and they, surprisingly enough, are ready to go.  I then push up to the registration office and ended up waiting another 15 minutes before they see me and by now it’s about 11:40.  Once the guy checks over my paperwork and gives me the proper and correct form, I then go back downstairs to the insurance place because they also make the plates, too.  After they make the plates, I have to go back upstairs, to get the official stamps on the plates.   Yup, four trips up and down those dern stairs but I’ve got the plates!!

As the dealership is just a kilometer down the street, getting there is no problem and Paul, the delivery manager, is very helpful in getting me sorted with Maggie, Too.  After driving over to Pentagon Car Sales so that Anthony, my salesman, can see the beauty.  From there, Kelly and Nyssa went on to Ramstein for shopping while Matt and I took the long way home.  Typically, this drive takes about three hours, however, for Maggie’s first trip, I wanted to take it easy and told Tom to give me routing avoiding highways.  This took about four and a half hours and was just lovely.  I had to remind myself to keep the speed below 100mph (not hard at all) and the engine RPMs below 4500, which was very hard to do.  There were a couple of idjits who wanted to play but I gave them a bye, this time.  Most problems were when passing Germans, they take that as a personal offense and allow their passive-aggressive tendency to speed up.  Thus, the RPM limit violations.  In any case, Matt and I enjoyed the drive and the time poking all the buttons, figuring out what does what.  In the MINI, there is ambient lighting from the overhead, by the rear view mirror, that lightly shines down on the dash.  One really, really neat thing that Maggie has is that I can change the color of the ambient lights from orange, red, purple or blue.  This also effects the lights in the doors, foot well and boot, too!  Clever for sure.

The reason my car is named Maggie, Too is from Kelly.  When I was considering getting another MINI, I was looking at an Anti-Maggie, red with black roof, strips and wheels.  However, Kelly told me that I wouldn’t have been happy with any other colors and that this new car “could be Maggie, too.” and, thus, the name stuck.  My first MINI was name Margaret Rose, so this one will be Margaret Rose, too.

Have I mentioned lately, or enough, just how great my wife, Kelly, is?

Cheers!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 2:21 pm and is filed under MINI Cooper, Maggie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.