Alicia Cermak

This morning in Minneapolis it is -17°F with a -36°F windchill.

In related news, my mum’s car wouldn’t start this morning. We have a single driveway, so we all line up our cars LIFO. Since she was next to leave for work, my mum’s car was on the end with my cars blocked in behind it. After trying to start her car several times, my brother and I sprung into action and started pushing it down the driveway, thinking we could just move it into the street, pull my car out, and then push hers up into the driveway, but we quickly realized we just wouldn’t have the traction to push it back up the incline. Before pushing down to the point of no return, we decided to see if we could get the Mini around her car. It was really tight, but eventually we made it with inches to spare.

You know what made it possible? The standard electronic-dial-activated Mini Cooper folding mirrors. I’d say folding in both mirrors bought us about 6 inches on each side of the car, which in a situation like this is huge. I’ve never been too convinced of the overall usefulness of this particular feature, especially not after my saleswoman tried to tell me she used it “all the time”, but it really pulled through today.