Jack's Electric Bicycle

Weekly wrap 10.13.06

This week’s total mileage: 39.5 miles

This week’s mileage on e-bike: 8

This week’s mileage on a regular bike: 31.5

Total mileage since July 10, 2006: 579.5

Total e-bike mileage since July 10, 2006: 469

Total regular bike mileage since July 10, 2006: 110.5

Gas savings this week: 3 gallons

Gallons saved since July 10, 2006: 36.7

Price of gas today: $2.72 (estimate)

Gas savings since July 10, 2006: $112.45

Flat tires since July 10, 2006: 3

Notes:

On Tuesday I “cheated” and used the car to do my route. This was due to a combination of the Columbus Day holiday, which meant the post office was closed and I was unable to go to Arcata Monday, and the fact that I had three inserts to put in the paper. Inserts are labor intensive and really slow things down. So my total mileage for the week was automatically reduced by 11.

Over the weekend, the Corolla’s engine light came on. So it went to the shop for service. They replaced a Johnson rod or some sort of valve in the emission’s system and charged me $438.

It’s times like this that I really hate owning a car. Unlike a bike, I’m unable to make the repairs myself.

Because the Corolla was in the shop, I used CP’s Prizm. That screwed up my weekly gas savings measurement, so the number listed this week is a really conservative estimate.

I was busy this week and didn’t have time to fix the flat tire on the e-bike until today. That meant that most of the miles I logged were on the regular bike.

Friday is the start of my long weekend of work, so I usually get my weekly “to go” order from the brewery for dinner. I usually use my car for this trip because it seems impractical to haul two meals on a bike. By the time they separate all the dishes (salad, vegetable side, cake, etc.) into separate cardboard containers, there are two plastic grocery bags filled to the brim.

Tonight I decided to attempt this trip on the bike for better or worse. I squeezed all the boxes into the panniers. It was a tight fit. Some of the juice from a tri-tip dripped into the box containing a chicken Parmesan sandwich, but other than that the trip went fine.

posted by Jack Durham @ 7:40 PM