Day 5

Well I exceeded my goal for last week, which was to ride my bike to work three out of five days. I rode it Tuesday through Friday, and I have to say I'm very pleased with myself. I decided I would try to ride it all week if I could, so I made the trek this morning and I look forward to meeting this goal!

I play volleyball in a league on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then just for fun on Sundays. I've ridden my bike in the past to the two leagues but since my game tonight is at 9, I don't think I'll be riding. As much as I enjoy it, I don't have any lights on my bike, and I really want to get to bed at a reasonable hour.  The league on Wednesday is sand, so some of us stay late and play doubles. Afterwards is usually pretty late and I'm pretty exhausted so I don't ride my bike. If I don't stay late, I'm usually car-pooling with my girlfriend who plays on my team.

I tend to grocery shop every two weeks, although since returning from vacation I haven't gotten around to draft meal plas for two weeks at a time. Part of that stems from the fact that my girlfriend moved in with me into my 950 SF townhouse the weekend before we left. There is stuff everywhere and my fridge is almost spilling over with items we haven't even yet tried to account for in our meal routines. As we get back on track, I would like to explore further the possibility of grocery shopping on my bike. I understand I will need a trailer of some sort which is large enough for two weeks worth of grocery shopping and has a compartment for cool/frozen items.

These are areas in which I would like to explore riding more, and hopefully as I get more comfortable and responsible with my time management, I will. In the meantime, another goal I have set for myself was to get through the rest of April without purchasing gasoline. I have three days remaining and I'm probably just over 1/8th of a tank. That will probably get me to my volleyball match tonight and then I will be officially warned with the "low fuel" light. I don't anticipate needing to drive anywhere else this week (Wednesday will probably have Amy and me car-pooling in her truck). If I meet my goal, then the idea is to reward myself with a few things:

1. Head and tail lights

2. Under-seat wedge for the essentials (I currently carry these in my backpack).

3. A 40# rack so I can place on top, a gym bag with clothes. I won't have to carry a backpack anymore...

4. A cargo net for the rack

Total: +/- $50 depending if I can find the items on-sale. At the very least, riding my bike this month has saved me about $60, so it's a worthy investment. There are some pretty good bike shops in town, so I plan to do all of my shopping online and will hopefully get everything at one place. I know I should take my bike to pick the items up (to save money from driving and to have it there to make sure all of the items fit), but I'm not convinced I'm going to.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep on trek...er biking!

Fitting post for Earth Day

I know the post is for Earth Day, but as much as I care about the Earth, I care more about the money I'm wasting.

I drive a 2000 Chevy 2500 Silverado truck; it's blue. I love my truck (I also own a gun, but I'm not a republican). About 3  years ago I moved into central-east Tucson from the northwest side as part of splitting up with my fiancee, partly to get away from her, but mostly to move to the side of town where most of my new friends, work and business transactions were. It made sense to me that in order to spend less money in gas, I'd move closer to where I spent most of my time. Oh, and I own the truck outright.

For 3 years I've been very happy with where I am. Suddenly gas prices started rising, so after a while (I tend to take a while to act) I decided to try my luck with riding my bike to work since I only live 3.1 miles away. I went out and dropped a whopping $250 on a hybrid Schwinn. That was last year; I rode for a few months and then it got cold (I know, I know... it's Arizona) and then gas prices dropped. I was happy to drive in my comfortable truck again. I still felt the occasional nag that I should get out there and ride the damn bike to save the world... but it was way easier to drive.

I have substantial credit card debt, by the way. I owe Citi and Capital One right around $16k (mostly Citi b/c of the better interest rate) and I'm trying to pay it off as quickly as possible. I just took a trip to New Zealand with my new girlfriend (we've been seeing each other for about 8 months) and I was able to pay for most of it in cash (thanks to my obsession about trying to pay off my credit cards). So now that I'm back and it's really nice outside, I thought: 'hey, why don't I start riding my bike more?' I rode it once before the vacation, but I drove the entire week after I got back. Now, today's Tuesday and I've ridden it twice this week, 2/3's the way towards my 'three days per week' goal. I'm happy. I have tons more energy already. My back feels better already (I don't workout lately, so I've been having chronic lower-back pains). If I keep this up for the rest of the month, I'll have gone a whole month without buying gas, which would be wonderful (6 days to go and I'm at 1/4 tank). 

So back to my point: I was on my igoogle home page and there was a Wiki-How-To link on ways to save water. From there I saw a link on how to live without a car. I read this article and it really got me to thinking whether or not I really could. So I thought about it and thought about it and then emailed my poor girlfriend (no, really I feel bad for her) this: 

"OK so I'm obsessed with making sense of things... sue me.

I tabulated my total expenses related to the truck last year and came up with $3300 (plus or minus $5) broken dow as such:
Gasoline: $2,095
Registration: $156
Insurance: $728.95
Maintenance (I called my mechanic and he actually added this up for me!!!): $227
Car washes (total guess but I don't get the truck washed often): $100

That boils down to 275/month! And I don't even make payments!!!

I thought about money I made while driving the truck, but really that money is for wear and tear on the vehicle, not just gas. I guess you could say that it should offset some of the maintenance costs, but to be honest, all it does is add miles and wear to the truck that maintenance really can't fix anyway... so I prefer to not even consider that.

Value the truck has brought...
- Freedom to go anywhere I please at any time for any reasonable distance: priceless
- Carting Dogs back and forth to Vet. The most realistic way to do this without a vehicle would be to rent a car each time. I am guesstimating I take the dogs 2 times a year (Flame): $100
- Moving things. Let's pretend you don't have a truck and I/we would have to get a u-haul truck. I checked the rates for a 10' box truck which would probably only take one trip to move your stuff, and I guesstimate it would be about $50 (29.99 + 1/mile). Pickup trucks and vans are the same price but are.59 / mile.

The only other real value the truck has brought (besides sentimental) is time. I don't know how many miles I put on my truck last year but if I break it down to just work, then I know that in a work year there
are 2080 hours, or 260 days. Each day is at the very least, 6.2 miles = 1,612 miles. I get about 11 mpg = 146.5 gallons. If we say the price of gas on average is $1.80 that's $264. If we say the average price is
$2.20 then it costs me $322 just to go to work.

It takes me on average 15 minutes to get to work driving, and about 25 while riding my bike. Extrapolating that over a work-year means I save 43.3 hours by driving. However, by riding my bike, I save either $264 or $322 respectively, which translates into $6.10 or $7.43 / hour! :). However, if you consider the fact that I will sometimes drive other places for lunch or after work, that number rises because I immediately don't do those things when I ride my bike to work (reducing the amount of hours saved by driving). For example - if I spend 10 hours per year driving to get lunch, suddenly by riding my bike, I now save those 10 hours, reducing the hours saved by driving to 33.3 per year, raising the hourly rate to $7.9 and $9.7 respectively . Also, if you consider the fact that I will sometimes
ride it to volleyball, that number doesn't rise, but the hours applied to it do.

So the point of all of this is... If I completely rid myself of the truck I would save between $2000 (I currently budget for $2,428/yr) and  $3000 a year, depending on how many things needed moved (but then we use your truck, perhaps). I would need to invest in some stuff for the bike like a trailer to put groceries in but for the most part, things could work. It would just take much more effort and dedication. I would also have the income from the sale of the truck (around $10k I'm guessing) which would help offset my debt. If I keep the truck but ride it 3 out of 5 days a week to work (156
days) and as often as possible to vball, and to buy groceries, then I save at least $300/year just from gas alone.

I have to think about those numbers and make sure they are reasonably accurate. $3k/yr is an enticing figure... Even if I can put $2k/yr additional to my credit card, that would be huge! I would definitely have it paid off by mid-next year. After that I can buy a respectably nice used car or SUV for under $15k for cheaper than what it costs to pay for my vehicle + credit cards each month today."

So there you have it. The reasons for this post are: 

A. To write something again.

B. To have the information somewhere that I can easily retrieve it.

C. To hopefully have someone with some intelligent thoughts on the subject comment... well, intelligently.

If my logic is flawed, please let me know.