drivetofive

Odometer:  507,401

Here’s an oldie from February, 2004.  The coupe had 125,000 miles on it.  The picture was taken at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Calfornia, after a 28-Legend “West Coast Meet.”  At the time, I had my 18″ x 8″ Mille Miglia wheels installed.

Had a bit of service performed on the old Legend this past week – just an oil change and some manual transmission fluid replacement.  In the meantime, though, I was able t0 cruise around in this fresh looking 2012 Acura TL with only about 1,500 miles on the odometer from Acura of Tempe.  I stopped by the best hole-in-the-wall Mexican food place in Scottsdale:  Fiesta Burrito.  The rolled tacos & guac are pretty divine.

Not a bad looking car from this profile.

This past weekend I flew to Salt Lake City to spend a bit of time with some friends.  Due to the short timeline, I opted for a flight rather than driving up the trusty old Legend.  I did, however, still get to roll around with a familiar car thanks to my friend Branson who let me take his Cayman White Pearl 1995 LS coupe out on the town for a couple of days as my “rental” car.  The amenities in this car beat an Enterprise compact any day!

Soaking up a few minutes of sunshine while doing shopping in Salt Lake City with my mom as well as my friends Jeff and Matt.

On Sunday night after flying back to Phoenix, I  took a drive to LA for work.  It’s about a 400-mile, 6-hour journey.  The view on I-10 westbound was awesome…

… until I ran into one of the worst construction-induced traffic jams of my entire life between Palm Springs and Banning, California.  The 4 lanes of freeway went down to 1.  I was alerted to this fact about 30 miles ahead of time by a sign on the side of the road, but thought it could in no way be that bad.  It was bad.  Horrible, in fact.

Even after a small “win” of having found a small frontage road that paralleled the interstate and moved at twice the speed, I later regretted having tried to divert from the freeway when I had to re-enter it and inched forward at a snail’s pace along with hundreds of other cars trying to merge.  I think I put 100,000 more miles on my poor car’s clutch just enduring this massive delay (along with about 3,500 people).  I later learned that the entire fiasco stretched over 20 miles and was due to late concrete arrival during some pothole fixes.  Nice work, Caltrans!  Aside from this, the trip to LA was an easy ride in the old Acura.

One of my sources for mileage inspiration many years ago was a man by the name of Lloyd Laycook of Kanab, Utah – not far from my hometown in St. George.  Lloyd became a bit of a celebrity in the longevity world when he took his 1990 Lexus LS400 to 555,000 miles.  The car was subsequently purchased by one of the Utah dealership and to this day remains on display there.  When I first heard Lloyd’s story, I actually sought him out and gave him a call to talk about his travels and success story.  Just shows you that with meticulous care, there are lots of cars out there that are capable of hitting miles in the 5’s.

I have to give a quick shout-out to my friend Wes at Highline Import Auto.  Wes has been there when I’ve needed him for jobs in the past on all of my Honda and Acura cars.  This past week I had an emergency alternator replacement in the Legend at 506,970 miles and Wes handled it on short notice.  This is now the third alternator that coupe has had, including its first.  The last one was an Autozone “Duralast” model that got me down the road for about 106,000 miles.  Huge thanks to Wes and his team for taking such good care of me in a pinch.

Finally another lesson in proper parking since I’m a fanatic.  End space, pulled far to the edge!

Back home to PHX tonight!

This entry was posted on February 14, 2012 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Misc Travel. 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.