Bill Smith / CC
As I usually do, I started out the day checking to see what was being celebrated today. As always, there are numerous things to mark the day.
For instance, May 12 is Limerick Day, to mark the birthday of English poet, illustrator and writer of many limericks, Edward Lear. While I do have a copy of Lear’s The Book of Nonsense around somewhere, I thought it best to stay clear of limericks. I briefly thought of getting you to submit some of your favourite limericks, but then had visions of many of them starting with the line “There once was a man from Nantucket…” or something similar. So lets not go there.
But today is also odometer day. That fun little device that tells us how far we have gone with our vehicles. Or can also tell us how far others have gone with our vehicles in some cases.
The first odometers were apparently developed in the 1600’s for wagons and other horse drawn vehicles so they could tell how far they had gone in a day. It’s not like you had to keep an eye on so you knew when to change your oil or rotate your wagon wheels or anything like that. But it would be handy to have a rough idea how far you had gone.
The first one for cars was patented in 1903 as the auto-meter.
But things have changed a bit over the years. At one time, not too far in the past, having a vehicle roll over 100,000 was a big deal. Sure, we switched to kilometers in Canada which made those numbers grow a little faster, but it isn’t overly unusual to have many hundreds of thousands showing on your odometer these days.
My car just recently rolled over 200,000 and still has many more left in it. I hope.
So vehicles have been known to have a stop point on their odometers. With my last car, I was told I would never hit 300,000 kilometers. They were supposedly only built to go to 299,999 and then stop. Someone forgot to tell my car. It was showing well over 300,000 when I finally traded it in. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t stop. Would the car have been worth more with only 299,999 showing instead of close to 380,000? I’ll never know.
But I find it is fun to mark some of those milestones with a vehicle. Just to see how far they have taken us in our time together.
