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2004 Wrap Up and Photos for A Mini Vacation In Vegas 2004by Dominic Tuso Photo Credit: Greg Witt
The Beginning Let’s start off with an exciting stat. It’s estimated that over 350 people took part during the weekend. Over 240 Mini/MINIs were in attendance for the weekend. Nearly a dozen classic Minis attended including a Moke. 
Photo Credit: Kazuo Suzuki
Pulley Party The first event of the weekend started early Friday AM. Paul Langley of Dynojet graciously offered their facility to host Randy Webb’s “Pulley Party”. Working all day long, Randy upgraded eight MINI Cooper S’s supercharger pulleys as well as installing other performance items like Cold Air intakes and upgraded plug wires.
Mt Charleston fun-run The first fun-run of the weekend was up Mt Charleston, early Friday afternoon. Sierra Vista MINIs hosted this event and 20 cars participated. This group was made of a great variety of motorers. Their diversity really made this event one not to forget. The views from high alpine road were spectacular! For me, Friday started off in Phoenix. Many of the people caravanning up from Arizona met at MINI North Scottsdale for breakfast and a quick drivers meeting. We left Phoenix just after 10AM. Time was running short for me since I needed to be at the Stardust to set-up and organize the “registration” table by 4:30PM (3:30PM Vegas time), so I skipped the lunch I arranged for the caravan and headed up the road to Vegas.
Registration I drove into the Stardust’s parking lot to see dozens of MINI and Minis already assembled. The Stardust was kind enough to set aside for us Mini/MINI only parking for the weekend. This was a big gesture from them as their parking lot fills up on Friday and Saturday nights. Originally they roped off 75 spots for us. I heard that people had to move the barricades to allow all the cars to show up. One person reported counting 120 cars at one point on Friday evening. 
Photo Credit: Paul Sanders I didn’t arrive in Las Vegas until 4:00 local time. Giving me just a mere 60 minutes to get stuff organized. Whew! I felt the pressure. Many people came up to offer assistance to me and my wife, including the owner of MiniMania Don Racine. So while I collected items being held for me in the business center, got checked into the hotel, and started laying out the registration table, Don and other helpers got to work stuffing the goodie bags. There was no way I could have stuffed the bags before leaving Phoenix because some of the items to be stuffed were waiting for me in Vegas. The volunteers organized an assembly line and worked for the two hours while I and others worked the registration desk. At the registration desk, we had four lines for signing of the guestbook and to receive goodie bags. Off to the side, Lee Ann Schneider had an area set-up to process those who pre-registered for her Friday Night Kick Off Party. There were 151 entries into the guestbook with a total of 252 people in two hours flat. There could have been much more, but many people coming up from California on the I-15 were delayed by a multiple fatality accident that delayed the freeway for over 6 hours.
Kick-Off Party The first part of the Kick Off party was a buffet dinner at the Aladdin. The Spice Market buffet, in my opinion, is one of the best buffets in all of Vegas. Lee Ann reports that 200 people attended the buffet dinner. I tried to get to each table to greet everybody, but time ran short. The slot party was beginning and people started moving upstairs. 
Photo Credit: Tina Nguyen Lee Ann had arranged with the Slot Manager to host a slot party at their MINI slots. Yes, you can win a MINI on a single pull of a slot machine! They gave us each $5.00 worth of pulls for free, and also an Aladdin baseball cap. What ever money we won, we kept. The person collecting the most won an R/C MINI Cooper. Runner ups won jackets and sweatshirts. 
Photo Credit: Rob Carver 
Photo Credit: Kazuo Suzuki
Valley Of Fire Fun-Run Saturday started off with an 8AM fun-run to The Valley Of Fire State Park. I failed to mention on the web site that there was a per car fee at the Valley Of Fire, which led to a little confusion. Then to add fuel to the fire, my fun-run notes mention the park fee is $5.00, which was true when I pre-ran the routes in January. Apparently it was raised to $6.00 on Feb 1st. I apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused.  Photo Credit: Larry Wong 
Photo Credit: Scott Michalak What surprised me was the early AM turn out. We had 57 cars motor up North including a classic Mini. The Valley of Fire is spectacular. You could spend hours exploring the sights. One person reportedly spent 7 hours at the park, missing both the Red Rock fun-run and the Park Social. 
Photo Credit: Larry Wong I heard back from many people that they did not take the road back from the welcome center towards Mouse’ Tank. This is by far the most fun road in the park and also has the best scenery. If you accidentally missed this, be sure to go explore it the next time you’re in the Vegas area. 
Photo Credit: Siddhartha 
Photo Credit: Nik Barbieri
Red Rock Fun-Run Things had gone a little long on the 8AM fun-run. I got back at 11:30AM, and spread the word that the Red Rock fun run was to be delayed until at least 12:30PM. So while I was running around getting things ready for the next fun-run, a local pointed out a huge mistake in my route notes. Around 12:30 I started the drivers meeting. Since we were running out of time (the park social started at 2PM), I wanted to give the group the opportunity to skip the Red Rock fun run so people could relax and grab a bite to eat before the social in the park. So I called for a vote. Only two people didn’t want to go. 
Photo Credit: Kazuo Suzuki 
Photo Credit: Jenn Tanzer So my drivers meeting started with pointing out the errors on my route notes. Although I did not get an exact count, my estimate was 90 cars went to Red Rock. I stayed behind to wait for the last car to leave. By that time, I felt exhaustion kicking in so I decided to hang out at the hotel and catch up on a few things before heading out to the park. I and a few others decided to head down the Strip, instead of taking the back roads, to get to the park that was only 6 miles away. It took us over 50 minutes in heavy Strip traffic. We arrived at 3PM which was the same time as the others who went on the Red Rock. 
Photo Credit: Kazuo Suzuki 
Photo Credit: Scott Michalak 
Photo Credit: Scott Michalak
Park NorthAmericanMotoring.com hosted the Meet & Greet at Sunset Park. Mark Ferguson, owner of NAM, envisioned a social at a park where people could get together and chat, show off their cars, talk with vendors…just like they did on his on-line community. The event was a ton of fun. Many of the vendors set-up shop. Terry Saythler Motorsports was there with their trailer showing off product they sold. Randy Webb was already there performing pulley installs for those who wanted to watch. Mini Fini had a table set-up with their wares. MiniMania had their RV parked there showing off their Stage III MINI Cooper S that was featured in the Feb 2004 issue of Motor Trend magazine. Since I didn’t get a chance to go around the parking lot, there may have been other vendor displays, forgive me if I missed them. 
Photo Credit: Bryan TwentySix 
Photo Credit: FineGtrPlayer What a windy afternoon. Things were being blown around, but people seemed to be having a great time. Earl Kinsel, with help from others, was selling event tee-shirts and the door prize tickets were being handed out. I tried to set-up a makeshift assembly line to get addition people to sign the guest book and get their goodie bag, but it was very difficult with the wind. 
Photo Credit: FineGtrPlayer 
Photo Credit: Rockin Rick Then just when I didn’t think things could get crazier, Penn Jillette pulls up in his custom painted Stripper Pink MINI Cooper. Yes, Penn from Penn & Teller fame. Because more people paid attention to his cool MINI and not swarming him, he actually had the opportunity to leisurely walk around and check out the other Minis/MINIs. Barney Rael, a classic 1966 Mini Cooper S owner let Penn take it for a spin. Penn’s 6’5” frame filled nearly every inch of the classic. What a sight! 
Photo Credit: Rob Carver 
Photo Credit: uss Nealis Around 4PM the door prize give-away started. Clover, “MiniClo” on NorthAmericanMotoring, was the host for the door prize give-away. We let every vendor who had prizes come up and talk for a short bit about their company then we raffled off their prizes. The crowd favorite was Peter Horvath of M7 Speed as he had two of the most expensive prizes given out. A Venom nitrous kit and a lightened flywheel. Overall, I think we had well over $2500 dollars worth of prizes distributed! Next year, we will have a megaphone (or some sort of PA system) and we’ll ensure the numbers on the raffle tickets are easy to read. We’re not sure as to the total count of cars, but it was well over 80. 
Photo Credit: Don Burnside 
Photo Credit: Rockin Rick
NASCAR Cafe buffet dinner Earl Kinsel arranged for a MINI only buffet dinner at the NASCAR Café. The atmosphere there made my wife and I feel like we were at a NASCAR race. The event was very relaxed with around 85 people. It was a nice way to start to wind down from the day’s events.
The Strip At 10PM many gathered in the Stardust’s parking lot to head out to cruise the Strip. 
Photo Credit: Jenn Tanzer 
Photo Credit: Jim Gallagher We had 73 cars packing two and three lanes, honking, yelling, taking pictures, answering passerby’s questions and the normal stuff you do when cruising. This was by far the most fun thing I’ve done in my MINI since I bought it! 
Photo Credit: Jim Gallagher 
Photo Credit: Josh Wiltshire
Hoover Dam Sunday I knew many people were going to be using as a travel day so I didn’t figure on anymore than 20 or 30 cars for the Hoover Dam fun-fun. At 10AM there were numerous people crammed into the Stardust’s lobby as it was very windy outside and not very conducive to standing around and having a driver’s meeting. Again I apologize for the errors on the directions (I transposed directions from the Red Rock fun-run onto the Hoover Dam fun-run), and we started off to the Dam. 
Photo Credit: Jenn Tanzer 
Photo Credit: Jim Gallagher There were over 50 cars motoring to the Dam. Our intentions was to regroup on the NV side of the dam before crossing over so all the cars could be grouped together to cross in one big procession. But the place where I anticipated to stop was blocked off with construction equipment and then the police didn’t let us use the large area at the security check point. So over the Dam we went and we swarmed a parking lot on the AZ side of the Dam. We grouped the people together and formed a big M in the middle of cars in the parking lot and had some people take our picture. Then we formed “MINI” and had some more pictures taken from the hillside, but I haven’t seen any of those pictures with the word spelled out. But it was sure fun trying to get people to line up to form letters! 
Photo Credit: Rockin Rick 
Photo Credit: Steven Wong After taking in the sights of Hoover Dam, some opted to head further into AZ and went to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon, about a hundred miles from the Dam.
The Charity As some of you know, Lee Ann picked a charity for proceeds to go to for the dinner events and for tee-shirt sales. That charity is the Mary McLeod Bethune Transitional Center for Homeless Students. Lee Ann reports $400.00 collected by her event that went to the charity. Earl reported that he lost money on the dinner but made up for it on tee-shirt sales. Earl collect $600.00 for the charity.
What's Next I had envisioned a weekend of people getting together in a relaxed way and that’s exactly what happened. Everything that was planned, did happen. Although there were some small errors made here and there and things could have been done better, overall the Vacation was a huge success! Everyone I talked to was having a blast and wanted to do it again next year. Here’s the big question. Will it happen next year? I went thru a roller coaster of emotions during and after the event. It took me 6 days just to start to feel normal again. In those days, I said things to people about how I didn’t want to be involved. However, I really do want to be involved next year as the organizer. I now know my limits and have learned a bunch about organizing. I will not be taking on so many things like I did this year. I plan to delegate and recruit people and clubs to help out and organize sub-event. Will there be another Vacation next year? You bet! Stay tuned...
Thank You's Thank you all who have supported me during the long journey from idea to execution of A Mini Vacation In Vegas 2004. For a fairly complete list of Thank You’s, please click here. Thank you to all of the people who provided photos for this wrap-up report. Photo credits can be seen by hovering over the image to display the ALT text. |
Presented by the Sin City
MINI Club
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