Doing less bad is still no good (Final in the series)

Well, here are the results after 41 weeks I have driven 8945 miles and averaged around 218 miles per week.

This number is about 100 miles more per week than I thought and driving has cost me around $900 in gas this year (not including other car related expenses).

I drew a trend line on the graph to see the thing that I realized myself, namely that I am cycling less and relying on my car more. Part of this has to do with the fact that we've been trying to (and now successfully) sold my wifes car, so we've put more miles on mine that was originally getting split between the two cars. The other side of this is that I've haven't been biking to the lab and instead opting to drive every morning.

So I am laying down a challenge to myself, starting next week, for 4 weeks I want to give up my car! It is going to be an interesting challenge especially since we've been enjoying a weird break in good weather that I am sure will crumble during my biking trial. But I want to try to reverse my trend and set a good example for commuting without a car.

The significant down side is the added time. Driving to the lab takes 30-40 mins. The train + bike takes about 70-80 mins. So it means waking up early/leaving early/ and more planning of my days. But, I want to try it...so we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully I'll be able to post miles biked vs miles driven in the coming days.

Muddy Buddy Chicago 2010

In two days Heather and I are getting ready to do Muddy Buddy race!
This is a race that some friends of ours told us about last year and couldn't say enough what a great time it was. So this year Heather and I have decided to give it a go and have been training and preparing for it!

The race starts at 7am and is about 5.5 miles long. The race starts with one team member on the bike and one team member getting ready to run. At the first mile the person on the bike completes the obstacle then starts to run. The person who was running does the obstacle and then gets on the bike. You repeat this process all the way to the end. There you wait for your team mate and complete a long crawl through the mud pit all the way to the finish line.

While we own a number of bikes and are enthusiastic bike riders, neither one of us owns a mountain bike. However, this is another example of the miraculous ways our community comes to help us and our friendSilvau loaned us his Trek Mountain bike!

So armed with this nice bike we'll see how we do, how much fun we have, and how dirty we get!
Stay tuned for results and pictures!

Doing less bad is still doing no good (Part 5)

Well, here it is. After 1/2 of the year here are my results in monitoring how much I drive my car every week.
25 weeks in I have driven 4518.6 miles averaging 181.7 miles per week. That is about 81 more miles per week than I would have guessed initally and WAY more than I want do every week!
If I break this down into monetary terms (something that should persuade anyone) and I estimate that gasoline in the Chicagoland area has been (as estimated by IllinoisGasPrices.com) has been around $2.90 per gallon and I'll give my Chevy Aveo the benefit of the doubt and say I get 30 miles to the gallon all the time...that mean I've spent $436 in gas this year! Not to mention oil changes / maintenance / insurance / parking etc...

Now, my goal is to get my average miles per week down below 100 miles...however I work at Fermilab finishing my PhD, which is 26 miles from my door. I should really be going there at least 3 times a week even though I can do a lot of work from home (it is important to have your face shown and to be where the action and expertise is).
If I use the metra and my bike it is about $5.50 each way (a little less if I buy a ten punch pass...and don't lose it) plus about 8 miles of biking each way. So if I just bought metra tickets and came to the lab 3 times a week that is 33 dollars a week plus 48 miles of biking coming to (in 25 weeks) $825 plus 1200 miles on the bike...double what the car costs in terms of gas...that seems unreasonable!!!
So the answer (since moving isn't an option nor is getting a different job) must be a hybrid solution where I refuse to use my car in any other capacity than just going back and forth to work (as long as gas stays under 3.50 per gallon or so) occasionally biking to the lab using the Metra with a ten punch pass (lower rates that way) and finding a reasonable substitute (carpooling with my lab mates / rock climbing people) to help keep my miles per week down.
So while I'll continue to plot my progress and keep this online I think this analysis has taught me two things
1) My expectation for what I do week-to-week only favors the good weeks and ignores the bad ones! I drive way more than 100 miles per week...but not every week...and the weeks I'm over, I'm WAY OVER.
2) The solution to this problem is non-trivial and should be a working hybrid that needs constant attention.
I think I want to get an odometer for my bike to start to see how many miles I in truth bike every week...to see if using my bike more is a way to offset the total miles I travel.
Expect more interesting plots with bike miles included to come!

Chicago Naked Bike Ride!!!

Biking is one of my many passions. Being naked...not so much. However, when my wife told me about the Chicago Naked Bike Ride this weekend I couldn't help but join in.

Needless to say it was a lot of fun!!! Around minute 4:39 you catch a glimpse of me and my wife riding by...near the tall bike and the completely naked man with orange hair. Now we didn't go totally nude, instead I was in boxer briefs (looking like a normal cyclist in stretch shorts) and Heather went in her 'newly weds' bikini.

With slogans like "Less Gas, More Ass", "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, that oil spill has got to go!" and the ever simple "F--k BP!" the ride was full of scenes of fun and freedom. While I do support biking instead of cars, and going nude to make a point...I don't necessarily agree with blaming BP for our oil spills. At least not so much as most of the riders did. Instead I blame us, our dependence on cars / oil based products / and the agriculture we've grown around oil based pesticides and fertilizers.

Now, I don't offer any solutions (yet...I'm still educating myself on the problem at large and my own contributions) nor do I think riding naked around Chicago really solves anything. But if you are going to make a statement you might as well have fun with it...and this was fun

Doing less bad is still doing no good (Part 4)

Well, here it is. 19 weeks into the year and the fluctuations are still present on a week by week basis, however they seem to be getting worse.
Granted there is some strange activity in my life in the last 4 weeks. I got married (which required more driving then I ever thought it would), then went on a honeymoon (which I did no driving in my car...but did drive while I was in Mallorca), then the week I get back BAM, 500+ miles going back and forth to Fermilab at 5am (no trains / cycling that early).
So what to derive from this...through 19 weeks I'm averaging 180 miles per week roughly...which is 80 more than I wold have guessed initially and I am biking WAY less then I want. Time to get serious about biking instead of driving and now that good weather is here I can see if I can drive down my average.

Bike Map Routes come to Google

 Thanks to my friend Mairead for pointing this article out to me from the NewYork Times

Google now has bike routes suggested and plotted for a great deal of American cities. Particularly exciting to me was to see that they already had many of the paths I take back and forth from Fermilab to the Geneva train station plotted out. This is obviously an improving tool so some of the less traveled paths aren't on there yet, but I was able to plot a route all the way to Milwaukee using this tool and found two possible courses

I smell a long well plotted bike trip very soon! To check it out look at this map in google and click on more, Bicycling


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