Today's already the 10th

So far I'm batting 1.000 on the 30 Days of Biking, here's the rundown:

Day 1 - Did a 30 mile weekend ride on the Surly

Day 2 - Carpooled in, biked home

Day 3 - Drove to work, got home late, but rode across the Ford bridge into Highland Park to run an errand (the store ended up being closed)

Day 4 - Took a Nice Ride bike across downtown and back to grab lunch.

Day 5 - Worked late so I took a short evening ride through the neighborhood

Day 6 - Pati had the day off so I convinced her to have coffee with me in Golden Valley and I rode the bike
home in the afternoon

Day 7 - Made the most of having to work a weekend by commuting to the office by bike

Day 8 - Made the most of forgetting some papers (my business papers) at work on Day 7, so did a quick out and back to the office to grab them

Day 9 - Performed my free parking trick: parked on the fringe of downtown and took the Nice Ride to get to the office and back.

Day 10 - Carpooled in, biked home.

If it hadn't been for my pledge, I don't think I would have ridden on Day 3, 4, or 5.

Consider this a five day warning

You absolutely HAVE to go check out the Nice Ride MN website and sign yourself up for a membership. As I've mentioned before, it's only $40 through May 31 and it's pretty easy for this thing to pay for itself with the money it saves:

Want to bike to work but don't want your bike to get stolen? Find a Nice Ride station near you and save yourself the $40+ you would have dropped on a Kryptonite lock.

Live in the suburbs and don't have a station close to you? Park for free on the fringes of downtown near a NR station, and ride on in to the office. In a week it will have paid for itself.

Even if you don't do either of those, a membership still comes with a TON of good coupons for bike shops and restaurants so you can probably get your $40 back through purchases at these locales. Not to mention that a membership comes with two complimentary 24 hour subscriptions for a friend ($10 value).

Seriously, this is a great deal, so go get yourself signed up PRONTO!

Toward another disequilibrium?

In a perfect world, my commuting miles would match my work hours:

4 miles to the office + 4 miles from the office = 8 miles/day

8 miles/day x 5 days = 40 = 40 hour work week

I have spent the past few months working a lot more than 40 hours, and riding a lot fewer than 40 miles each week. Hopefully that starts to flip very soon since busy season is over, and the weather is making for more ideal riding conditions. I don't think I'll be having much of a problem getting closer to a 1:1 ratio as long as the weather cooperates, and hopefully I"m closer to 2:1 or 3:1.

I did keep the "consecutive months with at least one bike commute" streak going by riding to the office on a Saturday, plus to the client site last Monday the 25th.

In other news, the NiceRideMN bikeshare is operational again, and I've already logged a few rides. Through May you can score an annual membership at a reduced price ($40) and they also throw in two vouchers for 24 hour passes you can use to let a friend tag along. Get yours here!

Hanging up the fob

November has arrived, bringing with it the first snow to the twin cities and the unofficial beginning of winter. Unfortunately, this also signals the end of the NiceRideMN bikeshare program.  The bikes were pulled from the streets on November 7, but the program is calling the inaugural year a success as it surpassed its initial goal of 100,000 rides:

NiceRide Year End Statistics

I would be very interested to know how their financial results stack up to their goals.  Some quick math shows me their program revenues from subscriptions were about $225k for the year.  This seems low, but is unsurprising since the bulk of the funding likely comes from sponsors like Blue Cross Blue Shield.  In any event, I'm glad to hear that program management was pleased with the performance.

What about my own $60 membership, was it worth it?  Here are my own stats pulled from the NiceRide website:

Trips - 88
Usage time - 7 hours

Admittedly, most of the trips and hours (65 and 4, respectively) were logged doing the Nice Ride 65 Challenge, leaving 23 trips for the remainder of the season.  Many of those trips saved me from having to park in the heart of downtown, or even catch the bus or light rail back home, even though I had to walk a mile or so from the closest bikeshare station.  Using a conservative estimate, the bikeshare probably saved four downtown parks, and four one-way transit fares:

Parking - $6 x 4 parks = $24
Transit Fare - $2.25 x 4 = $9

Adding to those tangible benefits, I also received a t-shirt, which I'll call a $5 value, plus a coupon book that saved me $23 (two bike shop coupons for $10 each, plus a Lucia's coupon that scored me a free breakfast item).

My riding certainly wasn't as prolific as this guy, but these items got me pretty close to break even, so I would say the membership was worth it:

$ 60  - initial outlay
($56) - total savings ($33 park/transit, $23 in coupons)
 $ 4 net cost

Does this mean I'm also hanging up my cycling habit for the winter?  Hardly, though I have been searching for bicycle storage options, which could potentially result in hanging up some bikes in the new garage.  What it does mean, though, is that I'll be transitioning from the Long Haul Trucker to a winter steed with studded tires to brave the ice and snow. I hope I get my gear in shape soon so the last four weeks aren't indicative of the next four weeks:

Summary
Week 101 (October 25 - 29)
Mon - Thurs - Car
Friday - Carpool

Week 102 (Nov 1 - 5)
Mon - Tues - No commute (vacation)

Week 103 (Nov 8 - 12)
Mon - Thurs - Car
Friday - Carpool

Week 104 (Nov 15 - 19)
Monday - Carpool
Tues - Friday - Car

Things I Didn't Do Over The Weekend - Ode to Joseph Heller

Of all the things I didn't do this past weekend, there are two that I feel especially compelled to share with you.

I usually plan my trips to visit family in the Des Moines area to coincide with my need for a haircut, since my hometown barber far exceeds any barber I have ever visited in every category (quality, thoroughness at trimming my crazy bristly-spiky hair, price, etc).  But this past weekend was an exception as I just wasn't able to fit everything in and get my ears lowered.

Haircuts had been on my mind ever since I noticed that Vodka Alley had gotten a mullet: 

If you've ridden through the alley at all this summer or fall, you would notice a significant change from the near canopy jungle that it had been.  The picture above clearly shows the transformation to "business up front", and if my camera phone were better quality, you would also see the "party in the back."  Maybe there were a few empty bottles the mowers didn't want to pick up, so they continued to let the vegetation run wild...

Speaking of geography along my commute, the votes are in from the quiz on my Public Art post, and there was so much disinterest in the quiz that it was hard to tally them up.  My neighbor Brendan wins the participation ribbon for actually guessing (via my Facebook feed), but unfortunately he missed the mark.  The correct fill in the blank answer was "C" (There is no ladder to climb).

Back to other things I didn't do...

The wife and I were in downtown Des Moines for the Saturday farmers' market, and didn't find any B-Cycle stations to check out.  Because I didn't see any stations, I wondered if the bikeshare pilot program had ended.  Sure enough, after a quick scan of the website's map, the stations were all in locations where we hadn't looked.  Sadly, this wasn't the first time that I had visited a city without trying out its bikeshare.  My visit to Washington, DC in the fall of 2008 claims that distinction, unless you count cities that don't even have bikeshare programs.  If that's the case, I actually didn't ride the bikeshare in Des Moines well before not riding the bikeshare in DC.

Interested in having a B-Cycle station in your city that you can not ride on the weekend, too?  Go to the website and vote:

B-Cycle

What didn't you do this weekend?

Summary
Week 98
Monday - Car (AM & PM Carpool)
Tuesday - Bicycle
Wednesday - Car
Thurs & Fri - Bicycle

Week 99
Monday - Car (AM & PM Carpool)
Tuesday - Friday - Bicycle

Week 100
Monday-Friday - Car

Mileage
10/22/2010 - 603.1

Publish Post

Testing the Existence Assertion

Note: The "Pin the Tail on My Commute" game is still on. If you haven't already, go read it and make a guess!

Nobody ended up taking me up on the invitation to confirm that all 65 Nice Ride stations in Minneapolis indeed exist. Nevertheless, Corby and I managed to obtain sufficient audit evidence to gain comfort over the existence assertion of the 65 stations.





We rarely strayed from our course, grabbing our first bikes at Birchwood Cafe and docking for the 65th time at Franklin & 21st Avenue. Other than dismounting for lunch at Punch Pizza in Northeast, picking up some water and Powerade at CVS on Hennepin Ave, and a brief call with a customer service rep (more about that below), we didn't waste much time in between stops. Our longest time between was only 10 minutes, and one of the station to station trips only took one minute (according to the My Trips function of the Nice Ride website).

It took us just shy of four cycling hours to complete the ride and my estimate for mileage was 36. The Nice Ride account login put it at 27.2 miles, but their assumptions seem a little faulty to me. If I have time, I'll complete a "complex estimates" practice aid, retrace our steps on Google maps to get some more comfort over management's estimate. I'm kidding about the practice aid, I just wanted an excuse to slip in some auditor-speak.

We did have to backtrack once, since a glitch in the system kept us from checking out another bike after we had docked at the downtown library station. After we were denied trying to check out every single back at the station, I called customer service and had what can only be described as a ridiculous conversation with this woman.

She instructed us to check the ID numbers of the bikes to find the ones we had just returned, so she could then release them for our use. The problem was, the bikes that she had in the system were not at the dock. She told me there should be 22 bikes at the station, and when I assured her there were only 20, she pretty much called me negligent and a liar, albeit in polite terms.

I figured telling this lady that this wasn't my first rodeo wouldn't overcome her obstinance so instead I proposed that we return to the previous station to check the ID numbers. I kept her on the line for two blocks, and sure enough, the bike IDs in question were there. Only the tech wizards at NiceRideMN will be able to figure what happened on that one.

Overall successfully completing the challenge was the "cherry on the spoon" of an otherwise perfect bike commuting week, and we even scored free jerseys for our efforts. I would definitely do this again if anyone needs a sherpa, or if some visitors wanted to check out some of the popular Minneapolis landmarks from the seat of a green two wheeler.

Week 94 Summary (September 6 - 10)
Monday - No commute (Labor Day)
Tues - Friday: Bicycle

Mileage Count (Fiscal YTD)
9/12/10 - 459.0 miles

Des Moines - the Revolution is Here

But will it be televised?

I just caught wind from anoynymous Dan in Des Moines that a bikeshare program has just launched in Des Moines.

B-Cycle

DM Register article

Okay, Des Moines friends, who's got the scoop on this for me?

Open Invitation for a Nice Ride

Remember when I mentioned I wanted to tackle the Nice Ride 65 Challenge? Well, it's goat time go time this Saturday.

My neighbor Corby and I are co-piloting this journey, and if anyone else is up for the challenge drop me a line. The plan is to depart about 10:30 am this Saturday and grab some grub on the way. We have no idea how long it'll take, or if we'll hit all 65 or not, but we're gonna have a blast trying and hopefully score some sweet Nice Ride swag in the process.

From the NiceRideMN.org website:

Prizes:

* 35 stations: Nice Ride t-shirt
* 45 stations: Nice Ride socks
* 55 stations: Nice Ride mechanics shirt (value $30)
* All 65 stations: Nice Ride jersey (value $75)

If you don't have an annual membership, you can still participate with the $5 all day pass.

Who's with me?

Pays for itself in the money it saves...

What am I talking about here, the Dial-a-matic Food Slicer? The Slap-Chop?

Nope, the NiceRideMN bikeshare program.

I purchased an annual membership for $60 in May, and it has already yielded some dividends. Yesterday serves as a perfect example. It was an ideal day for biking, but I had to be in Plymouth for a morning meeting. I never know where to park in situations like this, because I rarely drive myself to work if I'm downtown and loath paying for parking.

But the beauty of the bikeshare is that it expands the your free parking radius. I parked meters away from a NiceRide station, grabbed a bike, and pedaled my way out of paying $4-8 for parking. There's a station a block from the office so I don't even have to walk very far from there. Plus, the rack's even leave room for my papers (my business papers) and my lunch:



So listen up, my fellow downtown denizens, this could be yours for only three easy payments of $19.99...

Weeks 86 - 88 and Counting

Very little to report from a bicycle commuting standpoint:

Week 86 (July 12-16)
Mon - Friday: Car
Although I could have taken bicycle paths to within 0.5 miles of the client site (in Plymouth), I still would have had to traverse approximately 19 miles of on-path commuting. The time commitment involved, plus the potential for a sultry weather mix had me opt for the auto.

Week 87 & 88 (July 19-23, July 26-30)
I've been on vacation for the past two weeks, so no need to worry about the commute.

Counting
A few weeks ago I noted that I have not kept tabs on total miles. As I think about it, this omission seems ridiculous at best, and negligent at worst for someone who prides himself as a cyclist who counts for a living. Nevertheless I now have the necessary means to easily track mileage and report it as frequently as I'd like.

After some brief online research I decided on the Cateye Micro Wireless. It meshed up well with the basic features I needed, and appeared to be one of the most modestly priced wireless units on the market. I mounted it below my Cateye headlight, so my bicycle is no longer a Cateye cyclops. As of last Friday (July 23), I've logged just shy of 200 miles (195.3), most of which came from riding two days of RAGBRAI 2010. Keep your eyes peeled for a future post on my first experience riding on RAGBRAI.

In other counting news, I hope to soon be counting bikeshare stations in Minneapolis. I don't have a burning desire to test the assertion that there are 65 stations in operation, but the NiceRideMN bikeshare program recently issued the Nice Ride 65 Challenge for anyone who can successfully check-in to all 65 stations in 24 hours without incurring any trip fees. I'm not sure when I am going to attempt this, but I hope to do so soon. It doesn't appear that a full-year membership is required, so day passes ($5) likely work for this challenge, too. If anyone is up for the challenge and wants to join me, let me know.

An answer to the question

So what exactly was I doing on a bike...during business hours...within the city limits?



I'll tell you what I was doing: I was making use of the Nice Ride MN bikeshare. I was able to park on the street on Portland, grab a green bike, and ride to within a block of the office for my meeting. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay parking.