Errands By Bike

Here are a few justifications for doing errands by bicycle that I tallied up today.

I decided to meet a couple of friends for lunch while out for errands. I had to return something to Lowes (moisture barrier from my wood laminate flooring experience) and pick up a couple of other items (caulk, drill bits, etc.).

By the way, this is my We Add Up shirt. The idea behind "We Add Up" is that no one can do everything, but everyone can do something, and together we add up and make a difference. The shirts are individually numbered as each person orders one. The backside is chosen based on what you hope to do to make a difference. These include things like recycle, eat less meat, shower together, or, as I chose bike. There are several others as well.

I also wanted to run by Summit Hut to buy a cool SIGG sippy cup for my beyond-cool grandson, Julian. It's all environmentally friendly aluminum, non-leeching, non-toxic drinking goodness for my little man. Plus, it has a twisty top that will allow me to "turn it off" so he can't spill it everywhere. Mmmm. Sippy goodness.

Anyway, let's get to those numbers I was talking about. Running my errands took me about four hours. It would have, probably, been a bit quicker in a car but not by a whole lot, really. Probably less than an hour difference in all likelihood. I ended up riding 37.3 miles. This would have likely been just a tad longer if I had driven due to some bicycle "shortcuts" here and there. But the difference would have been negligible. My car averages around 23 mpg. This means I saved 1.62 gallons of gasoline, or rather, 1.62 gallons of gasoline were not used. At current prices of $3.63 per gallon for regular, that's $5.88 not spent! Using the carbon calculator at CarbonFund to figure out how much carbon per mile my car emits, I figure there were just over twenty-two pounds of carbon not pumped into the atmosphere by riding my bike today instead of driving. And, despite my appearance in the above self-portrait, I wasn't miserable doing it, either! To top it all off, gas prices went up four cents while I was out--seriously! Gas was $3.59 when I left the house, $3.63 when I came home. That's just crazy.

Anyway, the money I saved on the gas I didn't use didn't quite cover lunch, but it was close--within a couple of dollars. That's pretty good. And I got some exercise to boot! Oh, and I picked up a perfectly good drumstick on the side of the road, too. I'm going to clean it up and give a light sanding and some color using food coloring and let Julian use it to bang on his new set of bongos. Should be fun. I never would have pulled my car over to pick up a drumstick. Hell, I would have never seen the drumstick.