Posted: Thu 9 February, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, Travel, Work-related | Tags: 100000, 160000, mileage, mondeo |
Nuts, I thought I’d posted on here when my car’s mileage went over the 100,000 mark. However, I can’t see it. It’s somewhere around April/May 2009 though, from the look of it.
Anyway, today, with my daft mileage kicking up all the time, my car’s clicked over the 160,000 mile mark.
Looking back, I got it in March 2007 when it had a mileage of 56,000.
So in just under five years, I’ve added 100,000 miles to it. Which isn’t a bad average, considering the stupid mileage I’m doing at the moment. I’m quite surprised, actually, that the average is that low. There must’ve been some times where I did a lot less than 20,000 miles a year – although off-hand I can’t quite think when that would’ve been.
Ah well.
Posted: Wed 8 February, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Commuting, Driving, People, Travel, Work-related |
As regular readers know, I’m pretty renowned for doing stupid commutes. Last year I worked in London for six months, commuting daily, which we worked out (from mileage claims etc.) to have resulted in 19,000 miles of travel ’til the end of 2011, purely for work.
The London run was a 70 mile drive one-way, so a 140-mile round-trip, plus the 10ish miles on the Tube each way. Amusingly, it took an hour to do the drive, and an hour to do the time on the Tube.
Since then I’ve taken on a new contract, this time working in Luton. The driving time is a bit less – about 2 hours in the morning, 90 minutes in the evening – for a few more miles, about 80 each way all told.
Everybody else insists I must be slightly mad to do the driving I do, but I really don’t mind it. It’s a longer distance sure, but it regularly used to take the same time to travel by bus from home to Oldham when I worked there. It used to take even longer when I was commuting by train between London and Bath, or London and Manchester. (And yeah, those runs were seriously insane)
In general I’m less stressed when it comes to commuting by car than when I’m reliant on public transport – people piss me off too much for me to want to travel with them now when I can avoid them.
I probably still am stupid for driving/commuting as much as I do, but it suits me, so I’m happy with it.
Posted: Mon 26 September, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Commuting, Driving, Work-related |
Since starting the current contract at the end of May, I have now covered 12,000 miles just in commuting. In short, I know the relevant route enough I could almost sleep-drive the entire thing. Indeed, I have dreamed the commute on a couple of occasions – and believe me, that is no fun at all, because you wake up and have to do the entire damn thing again.
By the end of this contract (at the end of October) I’ll have covered 15,000 miles, just on the commute. And that’s just the driving section – although admittedly the driving part is by far the largest.
12,000 miles is – apparently – the annual mileage for the average driver in the UK, which goes some way to explaining the idiocy of my current commute.
Anyway, one thing that is coming more and more to mind is that I’m probably really pushing my luck when it comes to not having any form of accident involving another vehicle. (Which neatly avoids the time I spagged the car into a fence) I’ve seen the after-effects of plenty, and come damn close to seeing a few happen in front of me, but as yet – touch wood – nothing’s actually happened.
I hope that I can maintain that status through the next month…
Posted: Fri 2 September, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Commuting, Driving |
The more driving I do at the moment, the more convinced I am that travel news on the radio is involved with a totally different planet to the one I’m on.
A case in point :
This morning, the radio announcements were full of bits about the M11 being slow-moving between Junctions 5 and 4. Really slow, totally rigid, etc. etc. And when I got there? A totally clean run through – not even a delay or a dab of the brakes. Nothing.
It’s totally bizarre, and more than a little bit annoying.