Interstates I've Driven and Ridden On 2

It's been a couple of years since I last updated this, so I thought it might be good to feature this map again. Trips (by bus and car) to Indiana and (by car) to Raleigh, North Carolina, and within parts of Colorado mean I've seen a few other roads.

And if you find the map above interesting, someone else has a whole set of U.S. maps about linguistic differences from place to place around the country that you can find here. I often don't seem to fall into either the California or the Deep South camp; I have no idea why my pronunciations are so generally strange (for example, I say q-pon, not koo-pon for coupon, which apparently is odd just about everywhere).

Trains, Planes, Automobiles, and Buses

I recently went to Indiana via bus, the first time I've taken an interstate bus since age five, which caused me to ponder how I generally have traveled long distances. Below is the summary of how I've traveled each year, when taking trips (that I remember, sometimes estimated) over three hundred miles and trips over five hundred miles. Train and bus have not been too popular; car and plane have been used the most for between three hundred and five hundred miles, though most of that plane travel was in the early 1990s, when I had a job that involved a once-a-month trip from Southern California to Northern; on my own, I'd usually drive that distance.

Three Hundred Miles

Five Hundred Miles

Local Driving Trips

I was out with some friends just before Thanksgiving, and they brought up an interesting subject--namely, how often I drive outside of trips to church or the grocery store. I used to drive to work twice a week, but now that we're in a new office, I don't drive to work at all. This means that the car typically gets taken out only three times in two weeks: church on Sabbath and then, every other week, a trip to the grocery store. Most other things I can accomplish by walking, given enough time: most of my friends live close by and downtown is just a block away.

I wanted to see how often I drive outside of the two main destinations. As it turns out, not much--just one to two times a month. And here's what I drive to do:

The outer ring represents out-of-town stuff, the inner ring in-town stuff, with the in-town drives outnumbering the out-of-town drives by exactly one. Here's a breakdown month by month:

Car Colors

I've only owned three vehicles, each of them in a different color. Here are the vehicle colors that have thus dominated my life:

I didn't realize I'd owned the car I have now for so long (seven years). Hard to believe how much time has passed since I purchased it.

Miles Driven per Year

The miles I've driven each year have gotten higher over the course of the past six years, when I bought my current car. There's a notable jump in 2008, and that's when the only car rental company in town stopped allowing people to rent cars and drive out of state. Before, I'd always done long trips in a rental car; now I have to put the miles on my own car. My own car is nice, so the rental cars were often, in terms of comfort, a step down. Still, I don't like that an extra two to four thousand miles now goes on my vehicle per year.

Another big jump happened at the beginning of 2011, when my church split, as I now have to drive an extra thirty miles per week (fifty instead of twenty). In fact, because I bus to work and walk home three days a week, most of my mileage in a given year is for church--and those aforesaid long trips (this year, one to Texas and one to Florida).

Interstates I've Driven and Ridden

I have lived most of my adult life in the South. Hence, most of my Interstate driving has been in the South, as this map shows, the West Coast driving being mostly my moves back and forth and back from California. The yellow are the Interstates, the purple those I've driven.

However, if we include driving from when I was a kid, and my parents took me with them on various trips, my West Coast Interstate experience increases exponentially. Most of the Interstates I knew, in fact, back then were western. The few Northeast Interstates I've ridden on are from trips I've taken as an adult, which generally involve flying to an area to visit with others who then drove me to other places. The yellow are the Interstates, the purple are those I've driven, the red those I've ridden.

Car Repairs by Mile and Year

The month of September was a frustrating one with regard to my car--I found myself in the shop three times for three unrelated things. I hadn't had to make many major repairs on it since purchasing it back near the end of 2005. Or at least, that's how it seemed. So I decided to go back and check my records. Here is a chart showing how many major repairs (anything that isn't routine maintenance like tire rotations, oil changes, or new air filters) I've had to make since I purchased the car:
I suppose that 2008 through 2010 in part have spoiled me, with so few necessary fixes.

I'm just now getting to 100,000 miles. Perhaps, that has something to do with the sudden uptick in problems, though my model is one that typically lasts well beyond the 100,000 mark in others' experience. Here's the mileage at which I had to make major repairs since 2005:

It looks like I was doing really well for about 20,000 miles, but there's been a noticeable uptick in repairs in the last 10,000. It was a very trying September through November this year (ironically, the last mechanic who worked on my car said I'd done a really good job of maintaining it--well, yes, indeed, I have, but that doesn't seemed to have helped this past year).

Places Paint Is Wearing off My Car

The gray represents the places where the paint has worn to the second level--that is, the lacquer or whatever it is has pealed off, leaving the bare burgundy beneath. On the roof, what is still lacquered is so worn out, though, that it doesn't shine in the sun, not even after a washing--hence, those parts where the paint has worn off, right after a washing, actually look more shiny. A couple of tiny spots on the doors have gone to the gray base beneath.

I plan on keeping the car a while longer, so I'm weighing whether a paint job may actually be worth it, since the mileage isn't so high. I'm not even sure how much a paint job costs, but I figure it's ridiculously expensive. I saw some paint/body work done on a car when I was a teen, and it seemed like an incredible amount of work, such that I wasn't capable of it myself.

I notice a lot of other cars with a kind of paint fading that has taken place now. I guess it's to be expected in the South among older cars, especially when you have no garage and park outside day after day after day.