vehicular milestones

Last week Chris hit 18,000 miles on his motorcycle, the 2006 Honda ST1300. On Tuesday, I turned over 12,000 miles on my motorcycle, the 2007 BMW F800ST. And last night on his way to work, Chris took the 2004 Subaru Outback over 70,000 miles.

That's a lot of miles.

When I add everything up, at this point I estimate that I've driven about 135,000 miles in cars (70,000 in the Impala and 65,000 in the Subaru) and about 18,000 miles on motorcycles (8,000 on the Vulcan and 10,000 on the BMW). So in just over 13 years since getting my license, I've driven well over 150,000 miles. The actual number driven is probably higher than that, what with driving my mother's cars, Chris' car before we sold it, and so on, but I can definitely quantify the ones I've listed here.

So we've had the Subaru for five years this month (possibly even this week), and put 70,000 miles on it for an average of 14,000 miles per year. Most of this is for flyball tournaments, with only a few non-dogsport-related trips. We intend to keep the car for another 5 years or more, although Chris asked me the other day whether I'd get another Subaru again. My answer is an unequivocal yes, and I'd like to stay with the Outback series as long as the fit/finish on the current version works out when we are ready to buy again. Like right now I couldn't buy a new Outback - the armrests are completely retarded and the seatbelt ding is not able to be shut off, both of which would be huge issues for me. I've been really happy with the Subaru, it handles everything we throw at it without complaint, we haven't had any major issues with it, and other than the "time of life" it's at right now requiring the 60k service, a belt service, new brakes, and new tires all at one shot, we haven't had to spend much money on it at all. If I could just tow a small RV with it, I'd be perfectly set.

With nearly 10,000 miles of my own and just over a year of riding the BMW, I'm very happy that I bought it. It was a bit of a rush job last winter, as I needed something to commute on ASAP as driving for a daily commute is much more expensive (1 gallon of gas vs 2 gallons of gas plus $4 for parking). However, at this point I think I would buy the same bike again, as it has met my needs perfectly and I like it a lot. It could use a few more adjustments, with handlebar risers and a mud flap top of the list, but that's going to happen with just about any motorcycle so it's not something I fuss over. The bike always starts, always runs, and has never let me down when I needed it to do something. It's got its quirks, like that "extra neutral" between 5th and 6th gears that I sometimes hit, and it's really pissy doing 25 mph around Mercer right after getting off the highway, but nothing serious. I think I've definitely grown as a rider by having the bike, and now its size and displacement doesn't faze me at all. At this point I think a Hayabusa would be disturbing amounts of fun, whereas last year I couldn't even conceive of wanting such a powerful bike. However, stupid amounts of fun also involve stupid amounts of tickets, so I'm not planning to actually get a 'Busa any time soon.