I was talking to a friend the other day about how I love cycling to work because it is good exercise, good fun, environmentally friendly and saves me a ton of money on gas. He looked at me quizzically and said, "Do you really save that much money on fuel?".
"What do you mean? Of course, I do. I don't have to put ANY gas in my bike"
"Yeah, but how much extra fuel do you have to put in yourself in order to bike back and forth to work?"
I had never really thought of it that way before. On an average day that I drive to work, I end up driving 56 miles. That's 14 miles each way, twice (I usually come home for lunch). My Camry gets about 28 miles per gallon which means that I use 2 gallons of fuel on an average work day. Given the current price of fuel, commuting by car costs me between 5 and 6 dollars a day.
That means that for commuting by bike to be economically advantageous I would have to spend less than 5 dollars a day extra on food. An average day of riding to work accrues 40 miles; that 12.5 each way and then a 15 mile ride at lunch. Between bigger meals to fuel myself and snacks in between meals to keep me going, I probably spend pretty close to an extra 5 dollars a day when I bike.
Of course, that's not going to prevent me from biking to work. Even if I only break even financially, I still get all of the other benefits of biking. And from a fitness and lifestyle perspective I really like the philsophy of "eat more, exercise more". I ran into some guys on a ride last year that put it this way, "I eat to live, live to ride, and ride so that I can eat more".
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And then there's the fact that human fuel is not such a limited resource as car fuel is lately, and tends to be the impetus behind fewer wars.
I give you the Official Seal of Approval from the Sierra Club for your environmentally sensitive reasoning. As long as you are not "off gassing" ( and you know what I mean) beyond others you share the road with, you are doing more than your share !
I'm afraid that there is a little bit of "off-gassing" going on. To be honest, I'm not entirely certain that I would pass Utah's stringent vehicle emissions requirements. Let's hope that I don't get pulled over and asked to take an emissions test :)
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