[Indulge me. I wrote this yesterday, then had to dash out of work early to cover a story, and left it on my office computer. Couldn't post until today.]

Today's my Fourth Grand Am-iversary. I realized this when I thought, Oh, my insurance is up one of these days; I'll have to remember to put the new cards in the car. So at a stoplight, I checked the card I had in the car, and it expired yesterday. D'oh.

In four years of ownership, we've ...

-- driven to Chicago and back twice, with stops in South Bend both times.

-- gone to D.C. three or four times, with a side trip into Virginia once.

-- returned to Maine twice.

-- visited Cape Cod three times.

-- road-tripped to a wedding in the Cincinnati suburbs.

-- made innumerable trips to Boston.

-- moved twice.

-- driven to Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Camden Yards, Veterans Stadium, Lakewood's FirstEnergy Park, Staten Island's Richmond Bank Ballpark, Sussex County's Skylands Park, Pawtucket's McCoy Stadium, Batavia's Dwyer Stadium, Iowa's Field of Dreams and Trenton's Waterfront Park.

-- embarked upon the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge 2002, visiting all 11 Garden State lighthouses in two days.

-- made roughly six trips to Johnstown, with four of those involving Greensburg too.

-- gone to Notre Dame games at Baltimore's corporately named stadium and New Jersey's Giants Stadium.

-- seen Bruce Springsteen in Boston and Giants Stadium.

-- driven through the heart of New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and Chicago.

-- touched the pavement in a total of 15 states.

-- experienced two minor scrapes, both on the right side. One was my fault as nipped the bumper of a white car as I tried to parallel park. But it was a rental car of the guy moving out of the apartment I was moving into, so it didn't matter. The other was the idiot who backed up as I was driving by in a nearly empty section of parking lot at the Lakewood BlueClaws' ballpark. Those scrapes are still there on the little section behind my right rear wheel.

-- driven 78787 miles as of the drive to work this morning. Really. I'd guess that no less than 77,500 of those miles were driven by me -- 98 percent of them.

-- seen gas go from $1.57 a gallon in New Jersey the day I picked up the car, down to 97 cents as recently as February 2002, and now to $2.13 at the Exxon by the George Washington Bridge I pass everyday on the way to work. I don't go there. I go to the Getty ($1.95) or the Exxon ($1.99) near my house, or the Sunoco ($1.99) near the post office.

-- bought five new tires. The left rear one developed a flat, so I replaced that. Then the other three needed to be replaced last summer, so I got four new ones and kept the one that was just a few months old. It's in the shed in Little Silver.

-- replaced the left front headlight. But the lugheads at the garage I took it to couldn't get the light casing back in the same way the factory did it, so it's at a slightly upward angle and not flush with the socket. Dave and I are going to work on that one of these weekends.

-- had the driver's side window and window motor replaced, after I arrived at work at the newspaper one Sunday night and couldn't get the window up past halfway.

-- had the front windshield replaced after a rock kicked up by a dump truck on 280 in Newark put a crack in it that eventually started to grow.

-- enjoyed every minute of the music, the open road, the sunshine, the wind flowing through the windows and sunroof.

Hey! Did you hear Bigfoot was sighted again last week?

Don't ever break your toe. It sucks. You never realize how much your stride, your pace, plain old walking can be affected when any movement of your left little toe causes a sharp, searing pain all the way up your leg to the base of your brain.

And all you can do is tape it to the fourth little piggy next to it, make sure it doesn't turn white or blue or start feeling numb or tingly, keep it elevated as much as possible, and wait three to six weeks.

And it sucks the most in summer.