My Garage

One of the requirements for inclusion in the field trial was a garage to house the Mini E. Well, I do have a garage but it is a Long Island garage. That means it is an above ground basement. Most cars in my area have never seen the inside of their owners’ garages. A Long Island garage is used for storage. Some, like my neighbors, has a long, thin oil tank along one wall. If they’re lucky Long Islanders have a place to walk through the garage but that’s about it. Mine is no exception.

My typical Long Island Garage before the Mini E required clean-up.

As you can see, I have a lot of boxes as well as some loose… well… I’ll call it crap for lack of a better word. When I was a programmer in the PC Magazine Labs I learned the magic word: Gimme. All I had to do was say, “That’s an interesting program. Can you gimme one of those?” and I had one. When I left that job many boxes of old software, magazines and books went with me. They all landed in the garage and haven’t seen the light of day since 1994!

In addition, my model railroading hobby expanded from little, tiny “N Scale” trains to 1/8 scale ride-able models. You can see the cab of my little electric box cab locomotive in the upper left hand corner of the photo. To the left of the hand cart in the lower right you can see the end of a 4′ flat car. The controller board and the lower portion of the locomotive are sitting on the flat car.

Beyond all of that are the carcasses of several old home computers, an antique typewriter, an antique adding machine, various collectible Disney toys, and even an old television. All of this has to be sorted out and gone before the Mini E can move in.

Living alone makes this all the more difficult. As I’ll explain in another post, I expect the first electrical inspection on April 25. I’m hopeful that the car will arrive by early June. I know that some of you reading this do not have a garage this full of stuff. I hope you got a good laugh out of this post. For the rest, I hope you can appreciate the magnitude of the task before me and consider tackling your mess now when you can do so at a leisurely pace.