grips 'n' gears, who needs em?

My cruiser loves me! The feeling is mutual.

My happy news is that I went ahead and did a test ride to work & back last Saturday!
After Andy & I went on a long ride a couple weekends ago, I decided maybe the cruiser could handle the trek--and I wouldn't have to wait for my purchase of a nicer commuter bike. It was a lot of fun and only took me about an hour each way. As much as I love the cruiser -- gears, grips, and a 'tween-the-crotch water bottle holder are definitely on my wishlist. Oh! and, strange to say, I'd be down for some bike shorts with the padding between the legs. Or corn starch. Oh god, am I going to become one of those biker types?

So, now that I know I can do it, I think I need to suck it up and just start doing it. And cancel the gym membership I never use. I was thinking it would be interesting to keep a running tally of the tons of CO2 that I avoid emitting from my Honda. I'm trying to figure out my car's emissions but I'm not 100% sure about the data I've gotten yet. Maybe you know something about this?

I went to CarbonFootprint.com and went to their home calculator. I set the time span for 1 year, then under the "car" tab, I entered "12,000" as my mileage for that time period, then entered my car's efficiency at 23 miles to the gallon. It told me that I emitted 4.57 tons of CO2 last year. ugh. Bill Chameides of the Environmental Defense Fund explains one way of visualizing the gas in his Climate 411 blog post, Picturing a Ton of CO2. I finally get it. I'm just curious to verify the information I got from the CarbonFootprint.com calculator. You can't believe everything you read on the internet... or can you?

Anyways, assuming the information is correct...

1 year : 12,000 miles : 4.57 tons CO2
and
1 day : 19.8 miles : 0.0075409 tons CO2

Math!
1 day of work: 19.8 miles roundtrip
Approx. 244 days of work last year: 4,831.2 miles total
4,831.2 miles/12,000 miles = 1.84 tons/4.57 tons
1.84 tons/244 days = 0.0075409 tons/day

So far my tally is at zero. Time to get on the bike!