I'm driving up the Turner Turnpike, which is the part of Interstate 44 between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, to go to work. As I pulled up to the toll plaza, I saw I was getting the booth with the blonde with curly hair. I hadn't seen her in a while.
"Hey, I haven't seen you in a while." she says to me.
Wow.
I am at the point that the tollbooth operators recognize me.
Let me just say that if I hadn't already given my two-weeks notice the day before at my job, I would have done it as soon as I had gotten there today.
My CR-V is about to hit 145,000 miles. It was at about 118,000 when I started this job -- close to 30,000 miles in a little over eight months.But thankfully, it has shown no signs of slowing down. I mean, a little while back kc and I were going to Hy-Vee in Lawrence and she asked me if something was wrong with my engine because of the way it was groaning.
"No," I replied. "We're just going uphill."
So that's why it's amazing that this little four-cylinder engine has made six trips through the Rockies and seven trips through the Sierra Nevadas. It's cruised on portions of famous highways such as U.S. 1, Route 66 and the Pacific Coast Highway. And I mentioned the Turner Turnpike; my car has traveled the full lengths of the Kansas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Florida turnpikes.
No wonder I feel like I don't have a home -- all my time is spent in my car.
11 comments:
I was racking up the miles at about that rate when I was driving to El Dorado six times a week and Topeka one or two times a week and sometimes going to court in my own car.
Once I hit 200,000 miles, I wondered how much longer the car would last. Then a friend of mine told me that his car (same model, one year older) had 530,000 miles on it!
I was up to about 215,000 miles when it started burning antifreeze. So, only 2.5 years after my mom took the car away from my brother and gave it to me, I had to sell it to a salvage yard. I had driven about 80,000 miles in that car, and I had become quite attached to it. Getting rid of it made me quite sad.
Then I bought my POS Lexus. I paid book value, because I didn't know it had been in a severe collision several years ago. Now the transmission is shot (1st gear quit working altogether this week), and I can't afford to get it fixed. I may have to fix it and sell it and buy an even cheaper car with the proceeds.
So count your blessings and cherish the time you have with your vehicle. You never know when it will be cut short.
When I first bought the car back in March 2001, I remember my friend Jill's boyfriend, Jay, telling me how great Hondas are, and that it'll practically last me forever.
Now I don't think I'll ever buy anything other than a Honda.
What kind of car was your old one?
G-Daddy, I'm with you on the Hondas. I'll never get anything else. Actually a Honda Element would be perfect for hauling the dogs around. They don't have carpet, do have rugged upholstery and are very easy to keep clean, and I could take long road trips with the dogs. But they are a little too SUV-ish, although I think their gas mileage is way better than a lot of SUVs?
That'd be a sweet ride, kc. The EPA lists gas mileage of a 2006 Element 2WD as 22/26, which is just better than mine, and pretty good for an SUV.
I'm hoping my next car will be a Civic hybrid. Perfect for commuting between Lawrence and KU Med.
22/26 is not very good, is it? My 5-year-old Civic gets like 36. Yeah, I should get a hybrid.
No, it's not good compared with a Civic, but my sister's SUV is about average, and it's something like 16/22.
Hybrid SUVs can get as much as 40 mpg. Maybe if Honda ever makes a hybrid Element, you and the dogs would be set
Yeah, I would feel too guilty riding around in a gas guzzler. I could never justify getting something that had worse gas mileage than the car I already had. That would be a real step backward.
The car was a 1991 Chevrolet Lumina sedan. It seems strange that a Chevrolet mid-size car would have a reputation for lasting a few hundred thousand miles, but it was apparently just a freak model.
I've only had one car that got 20+ miles to the gallon on the highway, and that was my 85 horsepower Accord hatchback. It was 15 years old when I got it, and the way I drive uses a lot of gas (I always used all 85 hp), so it was only a little over 20 mpg.
I've never had a big, guzzling vehicle, but I've also never had a car less than 10 years old, and a couple were closer to 20.
My current car gets about 19 on the highway, but it may be more now that I can't accelerate quickly due to the failing transmission.
That's great news, George, that the car has held up. I hope all of your commuting days are almost over. What a difference it made when I got out of the awful K.C. rush hour madness and moved to Lawrence, driving eight minutes each way to work. Sure slowed down the mileage on my car!
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