My little pickup truck turned over 100,000 miles yesterday. I can imagine what everyone is thinking: Jared drives so much, how can he have a truck that’s over 9 years old and only now be turning over 100,000 miles?
I think the reason is that although I have taken many road trips in this truck (I’ve done the Minnesota/Phoenix/LA/Portland circle at least 6 times by my count, plus several loops out to the east coast too), I have only rarely used it for substantial commuting. I always tried to arrange my life so that my commutes were short or even walkable, so except for that rather unpleasant almost-a-year when I was driving almost every day from Long Beach to Newport Beach, I’ve never had a commute over about 10 minutes. And of course, for the last two years, it’s been in storage, putting on exactly zero miles.
So, anyway, I set out from Bob and Sarah’s yesterday morning, and per my usual randomness, I decided to avoid interstates for a few hours. I traversed northwest Illinois without even getting onto a 4-lane highway: I drove to the west of Rockford, around Freeport and Sterling, through many small towns and past the endless umber expanses of ripe corn and soybeans.
I crossed the Mississippi at Clinton, Iowa, and follwed the river on the west side down to Bettendorf. It was along this stretch that I happened to notice my odometer was at 99999. I looked up and saw a sign with an arrow: “Picnic Area, 1 mi.” So I drove to the picnic area (not, in itself, anything worth blogging about), watched the odometer turn over to 100,000, and then took a picture of my pickup truck for its “milestone” moment.
I crossed Iowa on the interstate. I went through some pretty major rain around sunset at Omaha, and I stopped at a motel near Lincoln, Nebraska. And here I am. I’ll post pictures when I get a better internet connection.
