Tank 335 - 30 October 2K12 (Plus an Update on The Resolution to Ride My Bike for More Time Than I Spend Commuting To and From Work In My Car)

So yesterday I put more gas in the Mighty Corolla, from the Sheetz store near my home (not as near as the Fas Mart, but I was near that Sheetz at the time). I had driven 391.4 miles and put in 10.866 gallons, so mileage was an uninspiring 36.02 mpg.

The notable thing about this tank was that it had been 16 days since I last refueled. 16 days is the longest stretch of time between tanks since August of 2008, over four years ago. In fact, there have been three other days where I had gone longer between tanks of gas, and those were back-surgery related or Thanksgiving-holiday-related, so this is quite a compelling statistic.

Or it was probably just because I skipped three days of work, two of which were related to the office being closed due to Hurricane Sandy.

Still...

On a more serious note, I did something I'm not sure I am proud of doing last week. I had read of people doing this before and rolled my eyes at such puerile behavior and wondered why anyone would do such a thing. But clearly time has worn me down and last week I did it. After much consideration, and looking at my work calendar and seeing a half-day full of sexual harassment prevention training and nothing else urgent, I fell and did it.

I called in (well, texted a message in) sick and rode my bike instead. And then I ate lunch by myself and watched The Avengers movie at an unreasonably loud volume. It was great and now that I have experienced such a day I wonder why it took me so long to do such a thing. I was all by myself with the kids at school and my wife at her office. It was super. Three hours and 50 miles of fun bike riding and a movie. Overall a great day.

And then on Sunday, on Hurricane Sandy eve, I had another opportunity for a good ride, and I went out for almost two hours as two kids were at youth group. Thanks to those rides, neither of which was really expected a week before, and thanks to two days off of commuting due to the hurricane, I made some great advancement upon my goal of riding my bike for more time than I spend commuting to and from work in my car.

The chart above included my trip to work today, but not my trip home. However, I plan on a healthy wellness ride of about 50 minutes this afternoon, and my commute home should be less than that, so it's very likely that I'll end Octiber about 18.5 hours short of my goal.

This is good for me, because Entering October I was about 30 hours short and needed to chip away at the gap by about 10 hours a month in order to catch myself. So I got more than 11 hours closer this month as we go into the "holiday season."

So it's looking like I should be able to stick to my resolution and meet this goal. It's a lot of bike riding. I've ridden that bugger almost 4,000 miles so far this year, for almost 11 days straight.