While on the ride back from the Bob Jones Trail and the Avila Beach pier Wednesday afternoon, sunlight poured in through the rear window and lit up the dashboard. My eyes fell on the odometer, which read 153,637. Wednesday was November 19, 2025. I bought my 2002 Camry at an independent dealership in North Portland, Oregon May 10, 2019, and that late morning the odometer announced itself as 126,769. A random calculator came up with this math – I’ve driven 26,869 miles in a little more than six and a half years. Those miles request I share their stories. So…….
Further calculation, they want me to tell you, determines I have averaged driving 4,134 miles per year. When I was a kid I remember hearing that an average person drives an average of 25,000 miles annually. So – Yikes! – there must be stories there. Here’s one: On a Wednesday morning in the middle of an April day 2021 my lovely wife Susan asked me for a divorce. Something like 10 weeks later I pointed the Camry south on the 5, detoured briefly to Gavin’s in Oakland for a night, and landed in San Diego, some 1,082 miles later. And subtract those two days pointed south, the other 363 days that year I accumulated 3052 miles of me behind the wheel, and, totally being geeky, in the 363-day-year of 2021 I averaged driving a smidge less than eight and one half miles a day.
(July 2021, Encinitas living:)
Hmmm – Not much in the way of storytelling. So, (another So), I’ve just now decided these mileage tales will be a story ongoing, a to be continued. I’ll see you back here – odometer kid – next time.
Fun fact #11 – I am now 325 miles north from San Diego, back toward Oregon, here in San Luis Obispo. Another “I don’t want to do this anymore” tearful hearing hand turning the ignition.
Cows have entered the picture.
from a mountain bench 
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