Bike vs. Commute Update: March Hasn't Been Good So Far

One of my established goals for 2012 is to spend more time riding my bike than I do commuting to and from work in my car.

My general plan for success includes running at a deficit of about 7 hours per month for the first 8 months of the year, and then in September my office is moving to a new location that will reduce my commuting time by (hopefully) about 50 minutes per day. The reduced commuting time combined with keeping the bike riding time the same appears to swing the deficit the other way for the rest of the year, and it's likely this will result in success (defined as more time riding my bike than commuting in my car for the year).

But I'm already 21 hours short on the bike riding with two weeks left in March.

The only solution I can think of now is to take a couple days off from work. But that's not likely.

I'll continue to track this data and trust that perhaps April will be surprising and this trend will reverse and stabilize.

I think that as the office move gets closer, I'll be attending site visits, which would count as work, and going home from those site visits would thus be a shorter than normal commute home on those days. That will help.

A final nugget of hope is that there's a commuter parking lot about 13 miles from my home and about 6.7 miles from where the office will likely be moving to. I'm mildly confident that I can park the car there and ride my bike the rest of the way a couple days a week. That plan would make those days bike time heavy, by a lot, and help close the gap swiftly.

It's wrong that I think so much about how I can ride my bike more. I ought to be working.

Tank 310 - 12 March 2K12 ($3.659 per gallon)

So over the weekend we drove to Charlottesville in the Mighty Corolla, so it used up a couple three days worth of commutes, so yesterday I refueled after just six days.

But the Mighty Corolla had gone 435.3 miles and I stopped at the Sheetz and put in 11.233 gallons of gas there. According to the math, that meant a mileage of 38.75 miles per gallon.

But of course we all suspect that the gas pumps at Sheets turn off sooner than the pumps at the Fas mart we tend to use more frequently, so there's a chance that my mileage wasn't really that good.

But then again, we blame Sheetz for the whole "37.23 mpg" debacle of last week, so it seems to be all leveling out over time.

The last time gas was this expensive was last May, when I paid $3.929 and $3.859 per gallon over the course of two consecutive tanks. Probably it was last May then that I did the math and determined that for someone of my commute distance, gas prices going up so much made for an additional cost of $6-$10 per week for gas, depending on whether you drove a Mighty Corolla or Ford Valdez.

My conclusion then was that if you can't absorb an additional cost of $10 a week for gas, you might want to reconsider some of your life choices.

My addendum to that conclusion is that there's no law requiring you to drive alone to and from work in a gigantic 12-mile-per-gallon behemoth of a monster truck. I'm sure there was no actual gun to your head to force you into buying a truck with sucky mileage.

Big cars and fast cars have one thing in common: they each get stuck in traffic alongside me in my economy car.

It doesn't make sense to me to spend my money on more gas than I absolutely have to use. So I drive slow like a granny and drive a car that gets good mileage.

You can do the same, too. You all have the choice.

Tank 309 - 6 March 2K12 (14th farthest Ever on a Tank)

Refueled yesterday on my way home. I drove through the Wawa gas pumps because they were entirely filled with gas-buying patrons, and then the traffic lights were on my side and I managed to go through two lights and turn left across a busy street without stopping and ended up at the moderately notable Fas mart near my home, where I put in 12.041 gallons of gas.

So it was the 14th farthest I'd ever driven on one tank of gas (448.3 miles), and the 7th most gas I'd ever put into the Mighty Corolla (12.041 gallons), making for a fuel economy of 37.23 miles per gallon.

I was expecting better mileage, but then remembered my last tank refill was at Sheetz and it's probable that the pump there put in a little less gas than the Fas Mart pump did, so the mileage this tank may be falsely reduced since I replaced the used gas with more than I would have used had I gone to the same pump at Sheetz again.

Still, 37 miles per gallon isn't too shabby. Indeed, I'm pretty sure the way I drive the Mighty Corolla gets better mileage than all other non-hybrid cars.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to re-think my conclusion that men who drive BMW-3-Series are the worst drivers out there. It may in fact be all Hyundai drivers (particularly Sonatas) and Honda Civic Hybrid drivers. But that's another topic.

Of COURSE You Get Home Faster After A Snowstorm! What Was I Thinking?

I take back everything I wrote yesterday.

Had I actually spent a minute to think about things, I should have predicted a swift commute home.

After all, my two fastest commutes home (34 and 35 minutes) were on the "earthquake day" last year, and on a day where it was blizzarding in the morning.

So clearly if I had remembered this, I'd have made the connection that my trip home would likely be faster than avarage. And it was. I got home in 42 minutes yesterday, which is 12 minutes faster than my average Monday trip home.

So that was a happy surprise.

And then an added happy bonus was that I got new pedals in the mail yesterday, and my daughter was having a friend over after dinner to bake a cake, so all the girls were doing cooking-like things and I was able to switch out the pedals.

My secret evil plan is working out quite nicely. I moved my current pedals from the "white bike" to the "yellow bike." The yellow bike had the original 1970s pedals with straps and toe clips, but now it has Shimano SPD pedals, one side clip-in and the other side a flat pedal. They are lighter than the original pedals, so score!

And the white bike now has new one-sided entry SPD "road pedals," which work with my current shoes and now I can use my bicycle shoes on both bikes. The new pedals are smaller and lighter than the Shimano ones, so score!

I'm slowly making the 1972 Yellow Atala into a second back up all-weather spare bike, and at the same time am making the newer white Windsor a little better with small incremental improvements.

Overall it was an happy day!

Snow On Ground = Long Trip Home Today

I woke up this morning and the weatherman reported perhaps 2 inches of snow at home, with perhaps a dusting at my office today. It wasn't precipitating at all so the trip in was fine, only a couple people doing the "pre-emptive park on the shoulder" move to hinder my progress.

So as the morning progressed, snow started at home. One local school closed for the day but my kids got on the bus and school was on.

Now it looks like there might be about four inches of snow at home.

Happily, it doesn't appear to be sticking to the roads, and it also looks like it will remain above freezing for the rest of the day.

Sadly, this won't stop the general public from freaking out and either drive way slower than normal, to show everyone else how nervous they are, or way faster than normal, to show everyone else that it's no big deal.

Unfortunately, slow and fast people still can't coexist in peace on the highway. In theory, three lanes on the interstate equals one left lane for speed demons, one middle lane for speed limiters, and one right lane for slow grannies.

In practice, there's onramp and exits and people mixing it up in all three lanes. The worst danger is the slow granny who camps in the fast lane, but that's common knowledge and I won't beat that dead horse.

But the blended traffic and probable wet roads will likely result in one or two unanticipated but not unexpected meetings of cars on the road. So the remaining drivers will generally slow down to see if it's anyone they know (it won't be).

And it's supposed to be nice weather suitable for shorts and T-shirts in just a couple more days. March is living up to its lion/lamb reputation this year, for sure!

Time on Bike v. Time Commuting in Car: An Update

I spent about 21.5 hours riding my bike in February, and about 29 hours commuting to and from work.

For the year, I have commuted in my car about 13.5 hours more than ridden on my bike. It appears that it's looking favorable that my biking habit will be able to catch up and pass the car commuting by the end of the year, if my office move happens according to plan in early September.

Last Monday, my boss asked me to meet him at a location that closely simulated my potential new commute to the office, and at the end of the day things happened such that he agreed my work day didn't end until I left from about the same location. So I have one day's worth of data to simulate my estimated commute times when the office moves to a new location later this year.

I got to this location (near my boss' house) in 26 minutes, which is 15 minutes faster than my current average of 40 minutes to work each morning. My trip home from about this location was 30 minutes, which was about 24 minutes faster than my average trip home so far this year.

This was pretty close to my guess that the new location would save me about 40 minutes of driving per day.

There's a commuter parking lot about 2/3 of the way between my house and the new building, which I am thinking I could use to park my car in the morning, ride my bike the remaining distance (about 4 or 5 miles), and come home the opposite way. There are shower facilities (probably) at the new building, for what that's worth. If I can do this "a couple three times a week," my goal to ride my bike more than I commute in my car should be achievable with little trouble!

So I think things will really get exciting in September, as the bike riding time should see a relative jump as the commuting time sees a dramatic decrease.