Restive State

I bough myself a new pannier today. Been wanting to get my stuff off my back during the commute, hoping that in conjunction with PT and exercises, my back won't hurt so much. We'll see if it works. Thing is, these specialty packs are expen$ive. I'm not exactly flush, so dropping a lot on something that may or may not work is a dicey proposition.

I had to think about what I needed to carry to and from work. Besides scrubs and lunch, there isn't too much. Expedition sized bags need not apply for this. Most of the junk I need is in the locker at work. Besides, having a small bag encourages me not too take the kitchen sink along. Let me say right away that while nice, Ortlieb panniers were right out. Can't really drop $100+ at this time. Sure it's for a pair, but I only need one. I found my way though. Thanks to articles at Commute by Bike and my hero, Fat Cyclist, came upon Banjo Brothers. Ended up with their "Waterproof Pannier" which considering we're in September already, will be getting a work out soon enough (never mind that it is going to be the 90's this week!).

After getting a rack on the bike, I mock loaded the bag with what I normally take: set of scrubs, lunch, emergency bike kit, personal items like keys, wallet, cell phone, Palm and other minuscule necessities. And you know what? It fit. Perfectly. With room to spare. Sure it knocked my bike a little off-kilter, but I think it will be worth. Otherwise, it's craigslist for it.

Til later...

This week's numbers:
Car: 242 miles (wife and I).
Bike: 18.5 miles (took a ride after work on Sunday morning).
MAX: 52 miles

Yeah, it was a heavy driving week. Both of us had Dr.'s appointments which are a ways out. Then my wife had PT twice, which too was far out. We car-pooled n Friday night though. She was going over to a friend's house and dropped me on the way.

Some weeks will better, some worse.

I know it has become cliche to be "green." Even the stars, like Leo among others, have gone green. Funny thing is, is that I've always felt this way. But unlike them, I'm actually trying to change my habits to reflect this better "greener" me. I figured as good of a place to start would be transportation. So as an experiment, I'm logging my mileage by different forms to transport, just to see what 1 person can do. There's 3 modes in my life right now...

The Totals this week:
Car: 52 miles...or close to that
MAX: 52 miles, as close as I can figure/map it.
Bike: 10 miles for work + another 12 for fun.

the end for the moment...

part 2...

Now figure that usually, if I drive each way to work, by Google Maps, it is 11.7 miles, round trip. That makes it 70.2 miles, just to commute to work. Now figure with an average of 28 mpg, that's the equivalent of 2.5 gallons. which at current prices works out to about $7.70. Or to figure it by the federal mileage rate of $0.44/mile, it's $30.89. The funny thing is, time is not that big of a deal. I used to leave for my 19:00 shift no later than 18:15, making it to work about 18:45, stressed out from the drive. Now, I leave at 17:50 and roll into work about an hour later, but no stress and feeling good from the ride. It's not a bad trade-off.

Now I know that 70 miles a week is nothing. We used to put on over 1,500 miles a month (more like 2,000) between my wife and I. We've dropped that to well under 1,000, probably into the 500-700 range. Now comes the fun part. Using figures for greenhouse gas emissions found in this paper, the average passenger car produces 5.5 metric tons of emissions a year. This is based on a weighted average for miles per gallon (22.1mpg) and miles driven (12,000/year). So based on these numbers, we were producing anywhere from 687 to 916 kg of GHG a month, which roughly works out to 8.2 to 11 metric tons a year. Now dropping to only 700 miles a month, reduces our emissions by approximately 4.4 metric tons of GHG a year. That's nearly the equivalent of 1 average passenger car, so in effect, we've taken 1 car off the road. And that's not even including other things that we have started to try to do. I know that the math is inexact, but I'm looking at ballpark here.

The point is, we're just one family. You don't have to make a huge sacrifice to change, you just have to try. So in honor of Earth Day, here's an article to help you get started: Ten First Steps Toward a lighter, more sustainable lifestyle. (via Lifehacker)


It's not much, but it's a start.

We'll see what next week brings.