Milestones

January 2, 2013 was a record making day...the race car officially turned 100,000 miles.  It's been 11 years since I bought the race car and it had about 9,000 miles on it when purchased.  I was thinking about where the car has been in 91,000 miles.  Seeing as how I had a 6 mile round-trip commute for the majority of that time, the miles came mostly in the form of trips...

To Redding for weddings and to visit cousins and their kids...

To Ashland for plays...

To LA for conventions and conferences...and Disneyland...

To San Diego for a wedding...and a stop at Disneyland on the way home...

To Tahoe many, many times...though never during the regular snow season!

To San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento and places in-between...

To Monterey...

To Pismo Beach...

To Solvang...

To Lake Shasta for a Houseboat trip...

The beach...

Most of the long trips, I had company.  The conversations that car has heard!  Many conversations were short and happened after youth group as I took one or two different kids home.  Those are my favorite memories in that car, bonding over songs (I wanna talk about ME!), talking about hard stuff in life, laughing uproariously about stuff that wasn't that funny, getting pelted with apples...wait, that was a different car!  A baby seat and a toddler seat took up residence in the backseat for a few years, even though the kids who occupied those seats weren't in them but once a week.  And there were some trips that were silent, where the point wasn't to talk but to just be with the other person as we processed the events in our lives.

There are scars on the race car.  Some have been repaired...the front bumper that I tore off trying to get out of a tight parking space...the hood where Papa Bear backed into the race car with his truck.  Some haven't been repaired...the back right fender where I backed into a light pole in the midst of grief that tore my soul apart.  Dings where someone opened their car door too fast and hit the race car.  There's a new/used drivers seat that doesn't quite match but actually sits straight up.

100,000 miles in 11 years isn't all that much but the memories those miles and years hold are huge.  One day the race car will be replaced...but in the meantime I look forward to putting more miles on that car and creating many more memories.  For the race car isn't just a vehicle, it's been a part of the ministry God has worked out through my life and there is still a lot of ministry left to do.