I’m at my aunt and uncle’s in New Jersey. I wish I rode my bike here, but I hitched a ride with my parents.

I’ve found that not having a car becomes most interesting when I break my standard routine. Normally I just ride to and from work. Once or twice a week I may go on an extra ride to the grocery store, library, or wherever.

I am not going back to work until January 5, but I have a lot of places to go and people to see. I live in a good forty miles from most of the people I care about. So I’ll be interested in seeing how I get where I need to go.

I’ll be interested in seeing how much I ride too. I ride mostly for utility, but I enjoy riding. Because I ride so much when I commute I don’t often go out and ride for sport. So I wonder how much I’ll get out and ride over the holidays.

By the way, I got new gloves.

I need new gloves.

Hale Ride. 1940's program to encourage physical fitness on a bicycle.

My four main motivations for going car-free are: financial savings, environmental benefits, health benefits, and the plain and simple love of riding my bicycle.

Here at Going Carless I’m starting a series. I’m going to explore each of my motivations in more detail. I’m starting off the series with the health benefits of commuting by bicycle. You will see posts related to sleep, eating habits, and weight loss among other things.

This first health related post is more anecdotal than anything.

It is no secret that being healthy is a good thing. Likewise, it’s no secret that a huge component to being healthy is exercise. By simply being active you can help fend off high blood pressure and diabetes. You can build muscle, lose fat, increase energy, and decrease stress. These are just a few of the benefits of exercising.

One authority somewhere said you should exercise for 30 minutes a day 3-5 times a week. Everybody’s been copying that person’s advice since.

I’m not trying to be rudimentary here. Actually, I’m breaking out the phys ed basics in order to stress my point. What’s my point? I’m lazy. I don’t go to the gym. I go hiking sometimes, but certainly not 3-5 times a week. I didn’t even get into biking for athletic or recreational reasons. I got my bicycle for almost exclusively financial reasons.Thankfully I love to ride now!

But here I am. I have plunged headlong into a car-free experiment. That means the vast majority of days I go to work I’m riding there. When I want to go grocery shopping then I get on my bicycle and push my pedals.

I started riding my bike a lot over the summer, easily hitting that 3-5 times a week mark. Now that I don’t have my car I’m well over that!

Cycling is an aerobic exercise. That means it get’s the heart pumping. It also builds your leg muscles like nobody’s business. Actually, it is other people’s business. I am going to weigh myself and measure my waist and thighs. I’ll start checking in once a week on the weekends with the stats.

Cycling does not build the upper body very well at all. How do you supplement upper body exercises?

Just think, I probably still wouldn’t exercise if I wasn’t such a cheapskate.

I discovered a web site yesterday. It’s called Green Light Ride.

Basically, you can track how many times and miles you ride.

Then you can join together as a team with other riders and get the total number of rides and miles for your team.

I talked with the other cyclists at work. We have decided to keep track of our rides for the entire year of 2009. We have a fundraiser for Relay for Life ever year. One of my co-workers suggested that people could sponsor us for a penny a mile. It looks like whether we do it or not as a fundraiser we are going to be tracking our rides. We are only counting the rides to and from work.

You should too. Do you want to challenge our team?

It snowed quite a bit over Monday night and it turned into ice all day Tuesday into Wednesday morning.

This is my first winter weather situation not having a car.

Yesterday I worked from home, so that helped. This morning I had to MC our company staff meeting, so I needed to not only be there, but I needed to be there early. I live on a huge hill. One of my co-workers lives at the top of the hill. She said she would give a ride, but text me if they were too bad. I couldn’t gamble on that. I needed to be at the meeting early! My girlfriend ended up giving me a ride on the way to her work. That means I was there at 7:00 am. The meeting started at 8:30 am. I was 1.5 hours early for work.

So this evening I am going out for wings with a buddy. We go every Wednesday. So he is going to get me from work.

In winter weather situations I need to share rides. I think one of the most interesting things about being car-free is being on other people’s schedule when I do share a ride.  It is a challenge I hadn’t considered. I wasn’t about to ride on a sheet of ice this morning. That means I had to come in when I had a ride. Same with leaving work. If I am getting a ride home then I need to go when my ride goes. It’s interesting. I have to be as kind as possible while I’m at their mercy. After all, they are going out of their way to hook me up with a ride.

This all makes me think that a post about Time Management is in order.

Does anyone ride with studded tires? Especially on a road bike? I’m very curious about how they expand my winter riding capabilities. What are the limitations?

I rode the 23 mile each way ride to my girlfriend’s this weekend. Having sold my car the entire ride felt totally different. It was a great feeling to be totally self sufficient. I can’t explain it. I felt so empowered knowing that I made it the whole way there and back on my own power.

I purchased some cheap goggles off of the Internet. As soon as I put them on they fogged up. I was riding by and saw a ski store and decided to stop in and check out some goggles. When I was in there they talked me into sport glasses. I like the idea of smaller glasses that don’t limit my vision. These glasses have interchangeable lenses: clear for night riding, regular sunglasses, and polarized. So far they seem to work fine, but by some fluke it’s been between 40 and 60 degrees. That’s right. It’s 60 degrees today! It’s going to be back down to 31 for a high tomorrow. How weird.

I’m still not used to not having a car. I had a car for 11 years. I feel like it’s in the shop or something, and I’ll be getting it back soon. I have so many habits I had formed that I am now forced to break. I often get a thought like, maybe I’ll go to Fuddruckers for lunch or maybe I’ll head over to the beer distributor. Then I remember it’s not as easy as it once was. You’ll most like see a post about time management and being carless.

Speaking of future posts, I think now is a good time to do series about why I have gone car-free.

My motivations in order of importance are: financial, environmental, for the love of riding, and health. I would say that love of riding and health are about equal.

I am going to explore different facets of each over the next week or two.

I’m also going to start some kind of daily update about the ride conditions, my health conditions, etc. I haven’t figured out the specifics yet. All in good time.

Picture by ....Tim. Used by permission. Creative Commons

Not having a car in a oil addicted society is definitely an adventure in and of itself. Not only is trying to find alternative methods of getting things done an adventure, but r

iding my bike in the cold, rain, and careening down hills is an adventure.

What do you do for adventure? What could you do for an adventure?

When I put my car up for sale I cleaned my car. I mean, I gave it the best cleaning it had had in a long time. My girlfriend and I wiped, vacuumed, buffed every inch of that car. I also bagged up all the trash and removed any unnecessary items.

In April 2008 I moved to 2.5 miles from work. Before that I had always worked 40 to 50 miles from home. That means I lived out of my car, so despite this intense cleaning I still had a lot of things in my car.

This is one of the unexpected benefits of not having a car. It forces me to simplify. I really did see my car as a mobile storage unit. I would keep all kinds of stuff in my car! Now I don’t have room for those items. So not only am I getting rid of the car I’m getting rid of two umbrellas, an LED flare, an automobile organizer (a big thing with tons of pockets), windshield shades, my cigarette lighter plug, and so much more. It’s quite refreshing to not have to worry about all of this stuff!

So not only am getting rid of more items than I expected, I am also removing a large area to clean. I didn’t clean my car too often. I would get around to it maybe once a month or so. When I finally did decide to clean I would clean like crazy! It seems like a small thing, but it will save me all of the stress of watching my car fill up with trash. I won’t have to see the coffee spilled down the console and being to lazy to clean it. Not having a car will save me the actual time of cleaning the car. It may not have been much, but combined with the stress of watching the mess grow it is quite a lot off of my shoulders.

Similarly, not having the room of a car will help me save money. I will be less likely to drive to the store on a whim. Then if I do decide to ride to the store I am limited to the size of my panniers. That means I can’t just go buy tons ofitems without planning ahead. This, of course, can be a huge limitation if I’m trying to get a case of beer.

I just got off the phone with my insurance company; I canceled my policy.

I paid my policy quarterly and kept the money in a high yield savings account. Well, I just reallocated the $177 that was meant for my insurance into savings. Not only that I’m going to get a refund check. Albeit a small one since the quarter is all but over, but still!

Picture by flattop341 Used by permission. Creative Commons.

I officially sold my car yesterday. It was actually a sad moment. I didn’t expect it to be such a sad moment. It wasn’t sad because of the experiment I’m about to launch into; that’s exciting. It was sad because I really did love that car. Frank Sinatra was only my second car. I had it for almost exactly six years. At one point, when I was in grad school, I basically lived out of my car. I drove 3 hour drives four times a week.

I guess it’s time to move on. The experiment has finally begun.

The other good news?

I had $1000 in my savings. My second credit card balance was $661. I kept looking at the money in my savings knowing I could kill the entire credit card in one fell swoop, so I did. I paid off my second card! I also paid $250 towards my third one. Now I’ll be able to pay $500/mo towards my third. I’m guessing I’ll have it paid off in five to six months. Then I’ll be free to plow into my college loans.