A Milestone Passed

[kevin_standlee]

While running necessary errands (principally collecting some of the month of mail I had on hold), I passed a significant-looking milestone with the Astro minivan.





Yep, that's 500,000 miles, most of it with either me or Lisa behind the wheel. Now the Astro had between 100K and 200K miles on it when I got it up in Oregon many years ago, and it has since then had a new engine and two new transmissions, but it's has really held together quite well, and has hauled Lisa, me, and all manner of stuff to many, many conventions.

The minivan may not be that pretty, but it's turned out to be fairly tough, and has met the criteria we set out for it when we bought it: comfortable to ride in, capable of towing loads (one trailer of Lisa's things came to Fernley behind the Astro), and able to reach conventions throughout the west with plenty of space (we've taken the show on the road to Seattle, Denver, San Antonio, San Diego, and many points in between, having been let down only once on the road to Layton where we needed to rent a truck to complete the trip).

Comments

[madfilkentist]

It's been a long time since I've seen a mechanical odometer!

[delosharriman]

Lisa gave me a radiation dosimeter she bought as salvage in Los Alamos which has a similar tumbler-type display.

[garyomaha]

I'm intrigued by that "Quartz" right above the odometer. Normally I'd expect that to refer to a clock, but it appears to be a gauge of some sort. The impish part of me wondered if that's an alternate spelling of "Quarts." I guess I should know what it is, but I don't.

[kevin_standlee]

It's the bottom edge of the speedometer.