Hi. My name is Don Burnside and I’m a MINIac.
I was born in 1968 and raised in Southern California.
I’ve always been a bit of a car nut and enjoyed driving cars that were a little bit different. I started with a 1965 Chevrolet El Camino. Spent every last dollar I had on paint, interior and fixing stuff. It’s remarkable about many water pumps those old cars went through!
The real bug was planted on my 2nd car. A bright red 1967 Austin Healey Sprite with removable top. I was living in San Diego at the time and this car was it! Top off, cruising the coast was my first real motoring adventures. When it ran, that car was more fun to drive than anything else I had driven. But being born of British descent and having electronics by the Prince of Darkness, it was soon ditched in favor of something slightly more reliable.
Skip ahead to 2002. I was in the market for a new vehicle and nothing was really working for me. On my list were cars ranging from sport coupes to full sized pickups. Then I saw it.
An Electric Blue MINI with a white roof in the office parking lot. I stole peeks at the car as often as possible and even went so far as to change how I drove through the lot to make sure I could get a glimpse of it. I started researching this wonderful looking automobile as much as possible and even got bit by the message board bug when I found NorthAmericanMotoring.com (then MCO). I followed others progress and read along as they went through the even so painful process of ordering and finally receiving their MINI.
I finally went down to my local dealer and test-drove a MINI. It was fantastic! My face hurt for 3 days from all of the smiling I had done, and it was only a 10-minute drive. I had to have this car! More research ensued and I returned the following week to ask some questions and drool a little more. They had just received an MCS that they were using as a demo and my guy asked me if I wanted to give that one a go.
I placed my order the next day.
Back to the message boards to get as much info as I could, but it wasn’t enough! I started collecting links to after market sites, other message boards and owner sites. Not being happy with what I was finding, I started a page of my own, to share with others, cool MINI sites. The site was mildly popular so I started making improvements. I added a chat room. Links to how-tos and even a tutorial on how to track the boat your MINI was on. With help from others at NAM, we assembled a checklist and I added that to the site. Finally, I added blogger to the mix and the result is the start of dbmini.us. Since starting the site, it has gone through more design changes than I can count and a gallery was added.
I finally got my MINI and things started happening pretty fast. I was one of the founding members of Southern California MINI Maniacs (SCMM) which means event planning and attending took over and the miles started racking up! Most of it posted at my site too.
About dbmini.us
This site, much like all of my others, is powered by the latest version of Wordpress using a theme of my own creation and a handful of very useful plugins.
All photos and videos that you find here at dbmini.us were captured and edited by yours truly using a combination of the following (depending on how deep in the archives you go).
- Apple iPhone
- Nikon D5100
- Canon Digital Rebel
- HTC Droid Incredible
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3
- Sony DSC-P71
- LG camera phone
- Blackberry Storm and Tour
- The Flip Ultra and/or The Flip Mino HD
- Canon Vixia HF 100
Thanks for stopping by!
db