Overall distance travelled (km): 18,685
- by airplane: 6,083
- by bike: 5,395
- by car: 4,840
- by foot 1,319
- by train: 688
- by TTC: 294
- by non-TTC transit: 49
- by horse: 8
- by Ice Explorer: 6
- by canoe: 3
Days I walked: 319
Days I rode my bike: 275
Days I was a passenger in a car: 41
Days I drove a car: 25
Longest ride ( km): 154.4
Shortest ride (km): 2.22
Times I needed rescue by car: 1
Rides longer than 100 km: 5
Rides 10-20 km: 184
Rides shorter than 10 km: 18
Days I rode without a helmet: 1
Flat tires: 2
Tire blowouts: 1
Broken chains: 1
Broken derailleurs: 1
Broken bells: 2
Broken pedals: 2
New wheels: 3
New drivetrains: 2
New brake pads: 6
Bottles of Ice Wax lube: 3
Bikes I currently own: 7
Bikes I actually rode last year: 5
More bikes I want to buy: 2
Chance that I’ll convince Risa that I need to buy more bikes: 0
At the beginning of 2009, I embarked on a year-long project to record the distances I travelled by various means of transportation. I expected cycling to come out on top by a wide margin. My mileage estimates a year ago were 5000 km by bike, 2000 km by car, 1000 km on foot, and 500 by TTC. I got the order right, but some of the numbers were way off. In particular, I hadn’t anticipated flying anywhere, and my car mileage was bumped up considerably by our (ultimately successful) hunt for a cottage this fall; two months accounted for more than 2600 km of the 4840 km total I spent sitting in cars, and 1300 km of that came in just four days of visiting, revisiting, and inspecting.
It’s a lot of work keeping track of everywhere you go for a year. The spreadsheet I used to record every trip is 787 lines long, with calculations being done on a separate sheet before being uploaded automatically every night to my web server. My cycling log will continue to survive into the new year (as it has every year since 1991), but I think I’ll be dropping the rest of the tracking.
Cottage? I take it you will only be travelling there and back by bike? That bike trailer should come in handy for trips to da back woods.
Remember, build the sauna first, so you can sleep in it while you build the cottage.
Although I doubt that we’ll be riding there regularly by bike, at just 110 km via the most direct backroadsish route, it is easily within my cycling range (even pulling a trailer) and I anticipate making at least a couple of rides there or back this year. I’m more likely to take my trusty old BOB Yak on a long ride like that; it’s much more suited to long-distance hauling. The cottage is also just 25 km from the nearest regularly-serviced train station (and about the same from the two closest bus terminals), so non-car intermodal trips wouldn’t be unreasonable. All that said, I’m sure that the car will be our primary transportation to and from the cottage.
As for the sauna, research is underway but construction may not begin until next year.
This is really awesome! Must have been hell to track, nearly as hellish as my business expenses and revenue tracking but possibly even more annoying! 🙂 Only fanatical dedication to such a project would give reliable stats.
Wonder if you found a trick or a device to do this. Now that 2010 is here, I could do the same out of curiosity… 🙂 (tho i have 3 plane trips already planned this year – 2 weddings and a climbing trip…)
I need to get an extrabike or a trailer or something.