I have now been commuting by bike 95% of days for the just under a year now and I love it:

  1. I’m saving my company the cost of the $120 parking space each month (there is a $20 tax-deductible bicycle commuter reimbursement through the gov’t that I wouldn’t mind getting, but requesting someone look in to it went nowhere).
  2. I’m burning an extra ~500 calories each week, which equates to ~7-8lbs each year.
  3. I have purchased under $200 in gas in the past year. That’s a $1000 savings.
  4. I was able to sell the S2000. $3600 or so saved in payments and another $1200 or so in insurance.

Now, on to the hippy parts:

  1. I had to run an errand in Tysons Corner this morning (for a bike part, funny [turns out I overpaid a tiny bit… oops! I swear that deal wasn’t available when I was looking]). I was actually sickened by the number of people commuting by car and by themselves. Seriously, sickened. I don’t know if my little bout with stomach woes last night contributed, but it is what it is.
  2. I am purchasing a Surly 1×1, a singlespeed bike for the sole purpose of commuting. No gears, nothing to adjust, should be comfy (steel) and bulletproof. I’ve already listed out the entire build [and bought most of the stuff] and it comes to about $750 (might replace some of my parts bin junk).  That certainly eats in to some of the savings from biking, but I do walk away with something tangible… More info on the bike build to come.