BIKE IT!
I have a new eco-goal. I filled up with gas today, it cost me $30. My intention is for it to last 30 days. That means no unnecessary trips, getting everything we need in one trip, and riding the bike for any trip under 3 miles. As a consequence, I will be riding my bike to work every day. I've worked out a route and I feel very comfortable riding the two miles, so I have no excuse at all to drive there. It would cost me 40 cents a day to drive there and back, which is $12 a month, or $144 dollars a year. That seems like an insignificant number to me, but the real savings is illustrated here in a pamphlet about commuting in Southern California.

They estimate the combined personal and societal cost of driving at $1.19 a mile. I think that might be just a bit high for me, given that things are cheaper here than in San Mateo county. But even figuring the total cost of driving in Dallas at $1 a mile, that makes it TEN TIMES as much as just the cost of fuel. That makes me biking to work save all of us $1440 a year. Now, multiply that by a million people (that seems like a lot, but remember that we're a nation of 300 million, so a million people only 1/3 of a percent of the population) and you've got a lot of scrilla. If one million people in this country biked three mile a day instead of driving (an easy task for almost anyone) as a nation, we'd could save over a billion dollars a year. 30% of that is direct societal cost, so it could save $365,000,000 a year. If Republican's really wanted lower taxes, they wouldn't drive so much.

Bike it, mother fuckers. Bike it.


In other news:



Trailer Park Boys is my favourite show. I know I've talked about it before, but I just watched yesterday's episode and I was laughing so hard I have to pause it so I wouldn't miss anything. This weeks episode featured Ricky addressing two cops as "Cock Knuckles and Dick Lock".

Also, I start the new job tomorrow and we made about nine hundred bucks at the guitar show over the weekend. We sold a lot of strings, but most of the money came from the fact that my dad is the best salesman on earth. I'm talking about real ice makers to Eskimos shit here. He's the best, and there's no denying it.
- posted by Mason @ 10:49 PM