Last week, as I left my (first) gym of the morning, I saw my little Z3 sitting next to a Saturn Skye.


                      

I bought the Beemer two and a half years ago, after looking at the Skye and the Pontiac Solstice.

I have to admit, from an aesthetic perspective, I think that the Skye (and the Solstice) are both prettier cars than my little roadster. But I knew that when I bought it - while it was a Solstice ad back in '05 that gave me the roadster jones initially, when I saw the Beemer my priorities changed.

I realized - no, wrong word. Let's change that to - I suspected that, when the Beemer had a hundred thousand miles on it, it would still be a BMW, whilst, when the Pontiac or Saturn got 100K, they would be Pontiacs or Saturns with 100K miles, and that was an ugly image for me to contemplate.(My apologies to those who are offended by the notion that many foreign cars will last longer than American cars. You go right ahead and buy American all you want!)

Well, as of yesterday morning, my BMW went over 100K, and I'm as much in love with it today as I was when I bought it - and it's not just me who sees it that way. A perfect stranger yesterday offered to trade all their worldly goods (at least, all of those that they had displayed out front for their yard sale :) for my little Z3. (Laugh if you want, but this guy had an awful lot of stuff out there in his yard sale :) - point being that anybody who sees this car can tell that it's in great shape, and I'm not the kind of guy who keeps his car in great shape. It's just a perfect triumph of "Cherman Engineerink".

...we went over 100K as we were driving up to Sunrise Ski Area, 200+ miles east of New River in the White Mountain Apache Reservation. We headed up there to pick up our new Season Ski Passes (<WaynesWorldVoice> "Backstage Passes! Backstage Passes!"</WaynesWorldVoice>), which were the result of much discussion and negotiation (I'm not sure what I've agreed to, but it seems to have something to do with relinquishing "all of that sex you were going to have - ever" and agreeing to never put Lucy's head under water in the septic tank again).

We're not sure just yet where we'll be staying when we're up at the ski hill - I have been arguing in favor of the "claim my Cherokee heritage as being descended from Apache" option, but Ethel just gets that look on her face. So it looks like we might be staying at a motel or possibly the casino hotel - we've considered buying a camper, but we've already got more stuff than we can maintain.

And we won't be driving the Z3 up there, as it seems that they don't make a ski rack for convertibles.