Michael Wright: How long is 5,000 miles?

When I was in high school, I changed my own oil. Five quarts of conventional 5W-30, every 3,000 miles. Knowing where the oil and air filter were on the Ford Ranger made me feel handy, and oil disposal wasn’t a problem – put it in a bucket, leave it in the shop, wait for my father to deal with it.

Moving away made getting rid of oil more complicated, so I started letting the pros handle it. Sometime after I moved on from the Ranger, I switched to synthetic oil, which came with the luxurious change interval of 5,000 miles.

Or at least it sounded luxurious until I found myself sipping mediocre coffee in a waiting room this week for the second time since mid-May.

At first, I thought there was no way that could be right. The sticker on the windshield said come back after 5,000 miles or in November, whichever comes first. I knew I wouldn’t make it to November, but how could 5,000 miles go by in two months?

Then I did the math.

First there was the Memorial Day trip to the Oregon Coast with my family – parents, four siblings, four nieces, a few in-laws, all there to celebrate my mother’s 70th birthday. We saw ocean sunsets every night and watched surfers ride the waves during the day. One morning, my sister and I searched for sand dollars on the beach.

Two weeks later, the wife and dog joined me on a camping trip up the Saint Joe. Upstream of Avery, we made fajitas, caught cutthroats and stared at the stars. The dog napped on the way home.

The following week, I headed out for five days on the Henry’s Fork in Island Park, Idaho, near the doorstep of Yellowstone National Park. When the Henry’s Fork is good, the insect hatches are robust and predictable and big rainbow trout come out to play, making a drive of any length worthwhile. The fishing was OK. Everything else – the scenery, a campfire with a friend, tailgate dinners with my father – was exceptional.

A week after I got home from that trip, I drove to Seattle to meet a friend for a concert. He flew there from Washington, D.C. After the concert, he needed a ride from Seattle to Columbia Falls, Montana, where he lives. He offered to take the train, but I wouldn’t stand for it. I wanted to see his dogs and the Mission Mountains. As a bonus, I got to eat steak and drink margaritas with his in-laws.

The next morning, while driving back toward Spokane, I felt the effects of pavement overdose. The cure was obvious: a side-trip to the Saint Joe via a Forest Service Road that begins in the I-90 corridor and slithers over the mountains. The fishing was good, the truck got muddy and the final two hours on the interstate flew by.

I arrived home on the first day of July with an odometer reading that suggested it was nearly time for fresh oil. Parts of the last few hundred miles were spent chasing sunfish at Fan Lake, stories in the Priest River drainage and rumors of brook trout near Chewelah. A trip to a little cutthroat river on a recent Sunday pushed the truck past the magic number, and a hunt for huckleberries pushed it even farther.

Now the truck has fresh oil and a new filter. The tires have been rotated. Another week of July is left, and then a whole lot of August. My wife and I are taking the dog camping again this weekend. Trout will soon be eating grasshoppers, if they aren’t already. Bass and carp fishing is in prime shape. Before long, steelhead will lure me to the Clearwater, and grouse season will open up.

I don’t want to drink waiting room coffee in September. But if I do, I won’t be mad.