Miles in Orange County

Since I moved down to Orange County, I've put over 4000 miles on my car in less than three months. Prior to this move, I almost exclusively rode my bicycle for transportation in San Francisco.

That got me thinking, how long did it take me to accumulate 4000 miles on bicycle?

Fortunately, I'm disciplined (read: anal retentive) at keeping mileage logs for both modes of transportation.

Here's a graph of my weekly mileage:

Perhaps a more useful graph to answer my question would be a plotting of the accumulated mileage. Graphically speaking, I'm taking the area under the curves of the weekly graph. If we represent the weekly curves as

then mathematically, we are taking the integral, so

would give me the accumulated total. This is just a conceptual explanation, since my mileage isn't represented by a function. Plus, I have the real data to construct the area under the curve.

It took me 2 years on bicycle to reach 4000 miles and only 2 months 18 days in a car. Of course, this comparison doesn't really say much, considering my current commute is a lot longer now than before, and I didn't really have anywhere to commute to for my last year in SF (being "self-employed" and all). But there are a couple things that I'm looking to change:

1. Try not to just accept the general OC lifestyle, but to get on the bike and ride once in a while.

2. Commute by bike. If I can bike commute the 25 miles (one-way) just one day a week, I can simultaneously raise my bicycle miles and lower my car miles significantly.

And now for some other random, slightly relevant analysis.

Assume:

• I ride my bicycle at an average of 12 mph in the city
• I burn 515 Calories/hr when bicycling
• An average serving of fish and chips (one of my favorite foods when bike touring) is 600 Calories
• A gallon of gasoline contains 31,000 Calories

For 4000 miles on the bicycle:

• It's taken me 333 hours of bicycling to ride 4000 miles
• I've needed 171,495 Calories to ride all those hours
• Which is the equivalent of 286 servings of fish and chips (one of my favorite foods when passing through airports), or about 14 miles for every serving.

For 4000 miles in the car:

• I've used ~150 gallons of gas to drive the 4000 miles
• Which comes out to 4,650,000 Calories used
• Which is the equivalent of 7750 servings of fish and chips (one of my favorite foods when grabbing a beer), or about half a mile for every serving.

Which brings me to my final points:

I'm getting hungry, and I'd be a more eco-conscious seafood consumer if I drove less and rode more.

Yum!