2013 YTD Mileage - Reconciling the Subledger

I will admit that it is a little strange to report numbers in the middle of a month, but I am afraid if I don't get them out there I will lose the data forever.  Granted, if I compare these miles against my total anticipated mileage for 2013, they will be mere rounding errors and are hardly material.  But it always bugs me that I have so much off-ledger miles that don't get recorded that I wanted to make sure I kept track of them all in 2013. 

Through February 18, I have ridden 56 miles.  Of those, 27 were in San Diego on a rental bike, and 28 were from two separate rides in Minneapolis.  Once enough of the snow had melted (or been plowed) to clear a safe path, I ventured out for some invigorating winter biking.  

Normally I wouldn't have to resort to updating a sub-ledger as I usually install a bike computer on any new bikes.  However, when I bought the Cross Check to commute with, I never got around to outfitting it with a computer.  Since most of my miles in the fall were on the Cross Check, I have a hard time seeing how anyone could do anything but issue a disclaimer of opinion on the operation of internal controls over bicycle mileage reporting.  I guess remediation will have to happen in 2013...

Q4 Reporting: Trend Analysis

As you might remember from October, I started reporting quarterly results of my bike commuting.  January has come and gone, so I am long overdue for a year-end update.  Here is how Q4 ended up compared to Q3.

At first glance, it appears that Q4 merely follows the pattern established in Q3 but if you dig further into the detail, however, a pattern emerges and a story begs to be told:

So what happened?  July had no activity as I was still working in public accounting and had not yet started a regular biking routine.  August through November included four months of consistent commuting activity, but December had none.

Did the cold weather suppress my bike commuting activity?  Not quite.  In fact the reason for the drop off was due to a job change.  Instead of biking 4.5 miles to downtown Minneapolis and taking advantage of what I suspect to be the best bike commuting facilities that I will ever experience, I now work in Eagan and have a 12 mile commute.  I have biked to work on two occasions since I started in late November, but I have opted to not bike as the temperatures aren't quite as bearable for a longer commute. 

All together, there were only seven days in my four month tenure at Target where I didn't bike to work. Four of those days were during my first week, and two were days that I interviewed for my new job.  

It all adds up to a commuting by bike percentage of 92%.  

78 Reasons Why I'm Glad I'm in No Longer in Public Accounting

Since I left the world of public accounting in July of 2012, I have done a lot of reflecting on what I gave up, and what I gained by making the switch.  It was a no-brainer to give up the work-life imbalance, yet not so easy to lose the day to day interactions with a lot of great people, both co-workers and clients.  Not being in client service has meant a predictable work location which makes regular biking to work much easier for me.

Although these are all great reasons, there is one benefit that I recently experienced that trumps them all: the flexibility for Pati and me to celebrate our anniversary in a warm locale.  For seven of our first 10 anniversaries, I was barely able to peel away from work for a few hours for a nice dinner since I was already knee deep in busy season workpapers.  This year we booked a four day mid-January trip to southern California.

So what are the 78 reasons?  Check out the following, do the math, and you'll see:

They gave the dude a blinker...

Just for biking to work 10 times!

And for every month that I get zapped at least 8 times, they enter me into a drawing for some pretty cool prizes.  How cool is that?

Finally, I can count again!

It's been over three years since I've been able to count, but I got back in the game last month (thanks primarily to my job change).  This time it was the city of Minneapolis conducting the counts and I pitched in two hours of my time to count pedestrians.

I even went above and beyond the call of duty, and in addition to cyclists and walkers, I also kept a tally of bike salmon.  Of the ~80 or so bikers, I was a tad surprised that only 3 of them were "swimming up stream."  

Aslo, first person to correctly identify my location wins a prize:

October Light

(From Monday's commute)

I always love it when the buildings downtown reflect the sun rising over St. Paul.

Q3 Reporting

For the first time in my life, I have been able to engage in regular commuting by bike, mostly due to a job change in July.  I started the new gig on July 30, and as a result I logged more bicycle commutes in Q3 than I probably did for the year in 2011.

Here are some YTD statistics through Q3 of 2012:

Number of days commuting by bike: 35
Percentage of commutes done by bike: 88%

I have also been utilizing a service organization to track my commutes.  The Zap Twin Cities program is doing some very interesting things in interactive commuting software.

Before, I tracked my commutes manually:

Now, it is 100% electronic:

Wave of the future, dude.