Second driving update for December 2013: Other car

At the end of Driving update for December 2013: My car, I mentioned that I might traveling during the last two weeks of the year.  I did, and it speeded up the next update on my wife's car.  The the last update on her car had it rolling over 85,000 miles on August 8th.  Since the previous update had been a year ago, it should have been another four months until the next one.  Instead, her car rolled over 86,000 miles on Boxing Day, two days ago.  What happened?

Simple.  We drove to Chicago and back for Christmas, adding more than 560 miles in three days.  We haven't taken a trip like that in her car since November 2011, when we drove to New Jersey and back for business.  At that time, I wasn't keeping track of the miles on her car, so I have no solid numbers about that journey's impact, although the round trip between Detroit and Trenton is 1208 miles, the trip lasted more than a week, and we drove at least 20 miles every day we were there.  I wouldn't be surprised if we went from 80,000 to 81,500 miles on her car in 10 days.  In retrospect, I would probably have been horrified to have done the calculations back then.  Instead, I referred to it in passing in my update for February 2012, when my mileage was ridiculously low because of three weeks of no driving.

Enough narrative--time for the calculations.  It took 140 days from my wife and I to drive her car 1000 miles for an average of 7.14 miles/day and 217.9 miles/month.  That those numbers are just short of double the 4.39 miles/day and 133.8 miles/month look about right.  What about the total mileage for both cars?  Last time, we drove both vehicles 3818 miles in 228 days for 16.75 miles/day and 510.8 miles/month.  I estimate that I drove my car 1640 miles in the time it took for both of us to drive her car 1000.  On top of that, her car has an extra 130 miles on top of the 86,000 from the trip, as the odometer rolled over between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, so the total miles for both cars is 2670 in 140 days for a total of 19.1 miles/day and 581.7 miles/month.  Honestly, it could have been a lot worse.  Just the same, this exercise demonstrates that driving vacations have a major impact on one's carbon footprint.

Finally, about that promise I made at the end of the last two reports.

Yes, I bought this car in October 2003.  I have a story about that, but I'll save it for the next report, along with why I named my car Yuki.  Stay tuned.

I’m going to take a rain check on this promise.  These look like the kind of stories I would write to post while I’m traveling, which I might do over the next two weeks.

It's late and I'm tired, so I'm not up to it.  Besides, this report is about my wife's car, which I call Ruby (my wife doesn't give her cars names).  I gave her that name because of the car's color and because my wife and I are fans of "Once Upon a Time," which had a character named Ruby, who is really Red Riding Hood, for the first two seasons.  Here's a picture of her as Red Riding Hood.