Sunday, March 1, 2009

feb 27th + 28th

I walked to work and back on friday. On the way into work I started thinking about the various things that keep me from walking everywhere. Mostly, I just have to drive when I have more to carry than I can fit in a backpack. It got me thinking about fabricating a cart I can take with me on walks for when I have a lot to carry; like a full load of groceries, or a large batch of inventory for the store. I hope to be able to put something together in the next few weeks. I just have to collect the materials. I plan to make the whole thing out of reclaimed parts. It was a little chilly coming back at night, but I walked fast, and warmed up quickly.

I decided to use the average MPG of all cars on the road in the US to plot how much gas I'm saving by walking. I could compare it to the gas mileage on my honda, but it's arguable that I'm saving a lot of gas even when I AM driving it, since it gets 45 mpg. According to the EPA, the US average this year is around 25 mpg, so I'll stick with that. It will give me stats on how much gas I'm saving over the average person by walking instead of driving.

So:

Feb 27th
7.2 miles
.288 total gallons saved

Last night I walked home from a friends house after seeing her home from a bar. I really enjoyed the walk because it was late, and very quiet out. It's a whole different city when it's asleep.

I used mapmyrun.com to plot the walk and figure out the mileage. It was 2.22 miles.

Feb 28th
2.2 miles today
9.42 miles cumulative
.3768 total gallons saved