Whew! An assortment of mile markers!

Yesterday's ride to work nudged me over the 5500 mile mark for the year! Since I rode the Raleigh to work a couple days this week, the YTD mileage on that bike is now over 1000. By the time I get home tonight, the Vanguard will have over 3300 miles on it for the year. I got over the 3500 mark for riding to and from work last week some time. Based on the tags I use in mycyclinglog.com's system, I have used bicycles instead of cars for over 4000 miles this year.

Wowsers! That's pretty cool. I'm not car-free, but I've sure had a good time riding instead of driving!

All this has led me to think about how much driving the typical American does in a year. For a couple years in the 1990s, I was driving over twenty-five thousand miles a year, mostly getting to and from two or three jobs a week in far-flung areas (I lived in Old Louisville, worked as a ramp-rat at UPS at night and doing construction work in Oldham County, eastern Jefferson County and parts of Shelby County during the day, plus odd-jobs here and there all over town). In those days, I probably put two or three thousand miles a year on whatever car I had in out-of-town travels (vacations and such), so twenty-two thousand local miles a year--a LOT of miles.

Many folks drive because they have far-flung activities they need to manage--either their own or of their kids. Or, perhaps, they have far-flung activities because they drive to them, instead of choosing to create activities closer to home (say, within cycling distance). Many homes are in subdivisions with one exit (or maybe two, depending on zoning issues). Some of these subdivisions are way outside the Watterson Expressway, and the residents work downtown, and get to "enjoy" clogging the Interstates every morning and afternoon, losing more time to each other than any of them do to me in months of passing me out on the roads I ride. People drive to work, drive home, then drive to a restaurant, or to shop, or to a movie, or whatever. They seem to think nothing of driving.

I wonder whether that's part of their problem with me as a cyclist. They just don't really think about cycling as an alternative to their habitual driving everywhere for everything. They see bikes (or more accurately, bicycle-shaped objects) sold in stores like Mal-Wart's toy section, and think of bikes as toys or at best fitness gear like a home gym (and think bikes should be used in narrowly-defined places, OUT OF THE WAY of their own travels). They don't think of what the authors of blogs like Copenhagenize call "citizen cyclists," those who ride because it's quicker, easier, safer and more enjoyable than motoring within a given radius, and who don't dress just for riding, but ride in whatever clothes they are wearing for work, shopping, socializing and such.

It is all about one's choices.

Part of my choice in where I bought a house was "can I ride to what I want to do, and can we ride to our jobs readily from here?" Part of my choice in my line of work is that I can use my job as a bully pulpit to encourage others to ride instead of driving. Part of choosing where I shop for groceries is how easy it is to get there from home by bike.

I am pretty sure we will track truck miles, but I haven't decided how I'm going to track the miles we put on the truck this coming year. I'm thinking that it would be interesting to have that information, and then figure out what to do with it, and how it compares to the bike mileages. I may see about getting Jenn to track her miles, too, just to see where that goes.