61 gallons...

61 gallons...

Last night Floyd and I were talking about biking - bicycling not motorcycling - and he mentioned that his son figures he biked 4,000 miles last year commuting to work and around town. 4000!

I'm so impressed.

That got me thinking about my commute...

I'm guessing I average about 40 miles of biking a week. That's trips to work, shopping, church...

Say I can ride 35 weeks of the year, I'm only up to 1400 miles per year.

My car averages about 23 mpg in town. So that adds up to about 61 gallons of gasoline I'm not burning a year. At $3.00 per gallon, I'm saving about $180 in fuel costs.

And burning one gallon of gas adds 20 lbs of CO2 to the air, so in a year by commuting by bike, I've avoided adding another 1220 pounds of greenhouse gas. Which just just barely offsets my flight next week from Chicago to Salt Lake City. Ummm...

Of course the real reason I ride is the sheer pleasure of it. No mode of transportation beats the morning commute on a bike, when you can get out of the long line of traffic, cut down the side streets, dodge the traffic lights, pedal fast, pedal slow, and breathe deeply. Instead of sitting passively, I'm actively engaged every second of the ride. Instead of feeling my blood pressure climb because of the other drivers, I feel my heart rate go up and my energy flowing. (OK - so breathing hard is probably not carbon neutral...)

But 4000 miles a year... 174 gallons, $522, and 3478 pounds.

I'm impressed.