Goodbye Little Car

Today, I said farewell to an old friend.  My little green car is mine no longer.  It has gone to a new home and I've no doubt a good home. :)  I will likely even get to see the car from time to time.  And I did tell it to behave for its new owners.

I had my little Mazda Protege for two weeks short of 10 years.  June 14, 2001 I drove that car home, brand new, off the dealers lot.  It had 61 km on it.  Now, today, almost 10 years later, I've delivered it to its new home, and it has 243770 km on it.  Oh yes, we've been places, my little car and I!

Now, you may or may not know, but I like numbers.  A long time ago, I got into the habit of recording my mileage whenever I bought gas, just because.  My dad did it (I'm not sure he does anymore) so I did too.  I never did much with those numbers, but I quite faithfully (with a few exceptions) wrote them down.  Well, awhile ago I devoted an hour or two of my life to putting those numbers into a spreadsheet.  You get some interesting facts when you do that.

For starters, here's how the 243770 km are split over the 10 years I had the car.

I purchased the car in June so I only did about 6 months of driving in 2001.  In 2002 and 2003 Rob and I were dating so there were frequent trips to W.  Our courtship continued into 2004 but Rob's parents moved to D. that year, so that dropped the mileage somewhat.  In 2005 we were married and started using Rob's car for most of the driving we did together.  My driving is way down for 2011, but I have only been going to work one day a week and that really cuts down on my driving.

A few other interesting numbers.  I bought gas at least 498 times (I did miss recording a few entries).  These trips to the gas pumps gave me over 20 000 litres of fuel, and cost me over $16 700!!!  The average price per litre over these 10 years was 83.8cents per litre.  I'd take that price again, no questions asked!

So little car, goodbye.   You've been a good car.  I'd miss you, except I have a new vehicle.  So callous, eh?  But it was dark when we brought it home, so a post on that will have to wait until tomorrow when I can get some pictures.  Until then, dear readers, you will have to remain curious!