drivetofive

Odometer:  504,418

There must be something special about vehicles made in 1994.  My friend Ryan shared a link with me to a fellow high-miler’s success story that I wanted to share.  Brian Greenslade from the U.K. recently achieved 500,000 miles in his 1994 Audi and there’s a great article here.  I congratulate Brian on his accomplishment and welcome him to the 500k club!  🙂

Speaking of high mileage in the global realm, through my WordPress blog’s “dashboard” utility I can readily view the sites that are linking to my site, and I noticed this week that Drive to Five is even getting some international exposure now.  An Acura Club forum in Russia appears to have been discussing it.  Here is the link to the site.

And on the opposite end of the mileage spectrum, last weekend I visited my good friend Chuck who’s had his pristine 1993 Acura Legend LS coupe since 2004.  It’s only got 29,000 miles on it and the leather looks absolutely brand new underneath the sheepskin seat covers.  You can also see Chuck’s 1981 Civic CVCC wagon in the background – pretty incredible condition for a 30 year classic car.

This weekend, the Legend stayed tucked safely into its warm bed while I hopped on a flight to San Francisco to see a concert for one of my favorite bands, Metallica. I got my ears blasted by some of the loudest music I’ve heard in a long time — an impressive performance by a band that’s been together for as long as I’ve been alive, since 1981.  Prior to leaving Phoenix, a last farewell to the sleeping beauties.

View of San Fran from my hotel in Japantown.

At the SFO airport, I couldn’t help but capture the following picture at a restaurant right next to our gate.  Legends!  The Bay Area was also the first home for my Legend and where it lived for the first 9 years of its life under the care of its original owner.

I received a very special gift from my mom.  She found online a place that specializes in converting blogs to books.  A package arrived this week containing my blog, from its inception in March of this year, through my 500k achievement on 11/4/2011, printed in hard copy book that’s 272 pages long!  Pretty awesome.

This afternoon I pulled the old hot rod out of the garage for a quick Sunday drive.  It’s days like today that remind me why I choose to live in this beautiful area:  67 degrees, full-sunshine, weather perfection.  I rolled out of the neighborhood with the windows down in shorts, a T-shirt, and flip flops.  Not your typical mid-December attire in many other parts of the country or world.

Here’s one of the entrance signs to the city in which I live.

I rolled over to the Phoenix Zoo area which is near Papago Park, home to many of the desert’s most famous plants, the saguaro cacti, as well as some interesting sandstone rock formations estimated to date back millions of years.  Papago has a nice little one-lane loop that makes for a nice scenic drive.

Next oil change is coming up sometime after the 505k mark, so not too far away.  Until then, This Old Acura (my favorite show growing up was Bob Vila’s “This Old House”) just keeps going and going and going and going…

This entry was posted on December 11, 2011 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Arizona, Legend, Road Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.