Today I performed the third oil change on my ATV since I bought it brand new in February of 2009. It doesn’t have an odometer, so I’ve had to use my GPS to keep track of the mileage for each ride. I was writing the mileage down in a small notebook, but I wasn’t adding it up after each ride, so for each of the last two oil changes I went over the recommended mileage by about 60 miles. This afternoon after doing the oil change, I wrote some simple formulas in a spreadsheet in Open Office that will keep track of the total mileage and the mileage since the last oil change. Now I can just enter the date and the mileage for each ride, and the rest is done automatically.
I averaged 27 miles per ride in 2009, and for 2010 I am averaging 35 miles per ride so far. I’ve got over 1,400 miles on my 4-wheeler, while Traci only has 800 on hers, and hers is a year older than mine. Sometimes I wonder why we bought two ATVs, but I suppose it’s been nice having them both around. Mark and Chris are probably responsible for half of the miles on Traci’s machine. I’m wanting to put a lot more miles on mine this year, but hopefully not at the expense of all the hiking I’m used to doing.