Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Bike-to-Work Challenge


The thing about living in Wyoming is there's always an excuse NOT to do something. It's too far ... it's too cold ... it's too windy ... blah blah blah.
In the past, I rode my bike to work in Florida (13 miles each way) and Missouri (1.5 miles each way - with a monstrous hill and a creek in the middle), but I have found LOTS of excuses not to ride the 3 miles from my house to work in my year's worth of living in Wyoming, where it starts snowing in September and doesn't stop until June.
Thinking about what a whining little sissie I've become in a place where people are supposed to be "cowboy tough," I decided it was time to make some goals.

Goal 1: Get off thy (increasingly) big butt and register for some bicycling races this summer.

Accomplished. With the help of my riding buddy in Missouri, we have signed up to do the Laramie Enduro, a 70+ mountain bike race on the trails of my mountainous backyard on July 31, and the very next week the Copper Triangle, a 78-mile road ride that crosses Fremont, Tennessee and Vail passes in Colorado. I was planning on jumping without looking when a friend said, "Vail pass - whoa. When's the last time you drove over that?" Shut up. I don't want to think about it.

Goal 2: Put together a plan to train for said races and stick to it.

Thanks to Amazon.com, I got some great books to help out with Goal 2, and I think I've been about 70 percent compliant with the plan I've set up, so I feel confident that I'll be ready for these races in a little more than four month's time.

Goal 3: Bike to work at least 200 days this year, beginning March 15.

Let me start by saying that this a completely arbitrary number. I thought it would be challenging. I have no idea of how attainable this goal is, and I didn't really think about it that hard. Now looking at it, I'm kind of scared, but 200 is a nice, round, ambitious figure that will sound super cool if I can say "last year I biked to work 200 days." Not that I would :-)

From a geeky perspective, if I accomplish Goal 3, that means I will save 6 miles a day from my car's odometer, which is 1,200 miles a year. Given that my car averages about 35 miles per gallon in town in cold weather, that means I will save 35 gallons of gasoline. At a price of about $2.50 per gallon, this will save me about $88 in a year. So as you can see, I'm not doing it for the money. I'm sure there will be times when I will be willing to pay $88 for a ride. But it will save me nearly four trips to the gas station, and considering I only fill up once a month now, that will cut my annual gas bill by about one-third, which I think is impressive.

At this point, I'm happy to report that I have six days of commuting under my belt, and already I have biked through two blizzards and crashed on the ice once. So even if I fail miserably, and drive to work more than 55 days this year, at the very least I will have earned some interesting stories to share. Stay tuned ...


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