How to double the miles on your car in 8 days

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I'll probably trip 5000 miles before I leave town on Saturday. When I roll into DC a week later I should be comfortably over 9000 miles.

Not all that deceiving, really

I decided to go driving last weekend. Ostensibly I wanted to get some highway miles on my car to see if there was some reason I was getting 12 mpg, but I also thought it would be fun to see what's north of Seattle. Each mile farther north I go becomes the farthest north I've been in North America. I ended up driving to Bellingham (home of Western Washington U), but it was too rainy to bother walking around to see if there was anything interesting to, um, see.

On my way back south I drove onto Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island and to the bridge between them at Deception Pass. I had heard that it was a pretty neat setting. I think the pictures seem to validate that:

Here's my problem with Deception Pass: it really isn't very deceptive. Apparently it was so named because the narrow straight fooled people into thinking that Whidbey Island was really Whidbey Peninsula. Or because Deception Island blocked the view of the pass from the ocean and deceived people into thinking the pass was really a bay. Take a look at the island.


Are you confused? Why do idiots from the 1700s get to name everything just because they were first?

3861

That's how many miles my car had on it when I got the oil changed on Saturday afternoon. This isn't a particularly notable story except for what it means I don't do a lot of these days: drive.

Just how little? Let's dig into the stats a little bit:

• I've owned the car for ~280 days
  
• The car had 1700 miles when it was loaded on the trailer to be shipped to Seattle
• Overall I've averaged 13.8 miles/day
  
• While in DC I averaged 28.3 miles/day
  
• While in Seattle I've been averaging just 9.8 miles/day
• A 10,000 mile/year lease is 27.4 miles/day
  

Which means I own a very nice depreciating asset, albeit slightly slower than average. Which kind of sucks.