It's Sixteen Miles To The Promised Land, And I'm Doing The Best I Can

--"With Arms Outstretched", Rilo Kiley

I started a new blog:

Sixteen Miles

In my own words,

This is a site about you and all those memorable times that life thrust upon you in or around your car. This is about all those late-night drives, conversations in the pouring rain in the parking lot, and the pleasant surprises you had while on the 210. It's about a record of your life.

One mile at a time.

I felt it was time for something new. I haven't grown tired of this site yet, but sometimes I miss the interaction. That's what I hope 16 miles will be about, a place for people to send in the kind of stories I like to read. For some reason that always happens to me. I always get myself into stories involving sitting in a car somewhere with somebody I care about. Sometimes it isn't a huge deal. But other times the huge life-affirming or life-destroying events happen to me out of nowhere. I wanted a place to capture that.

----

Before I started driving I didn't think in terms of this happened on this day or this happened on that day. I remembered the experience more--first day of school, first kiss, first heartbreak, &c...--but I never bothered to pin down the day on a calendar. I never kept a journal before the internet. I hardly ever took pictures. I just remembered what happened for what it was.

When I started driving, though, I noticed that a lot of more times I could remember because I could look to my odometer and see how long ago something happened. It's like my car was keeping a silent record of the comings and goings of my life. It occurred to me that somebody could keep a kind of record of their days just by the miles they've put on their car. I certainly could. If I looked back at my blog I'd have to say 50% of my most memorable times involved a car somewhere. Whether I was driving somewhere in one, parked in one, or just sitting on the curb next to one, it's difficult to have a day go by where I'm not near my car when something pivotal happens.

So that's what I thought of when my car hit 34,839 miles the other day--a site where good folks could post all the happenings of their life and where they were when it happened. More importantly, they could post up at what mileage the golden moments of their life took place so that way any time they stepped into their car they could realize how long ago (or how recently) their world was changed.

The format's simple. I don't want anything too long. Five hundred words should do. And all you have to do is title the post with the mileage on your car and send me the idea through the twitter account Sixteen Miles. If I like the idea I'll reply back for a more in-depth article to post it here.

I only hope that sharing the experience here will remind them of the good times people had or maybe take the sting a bit out of the bad times.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers