Since 11 Feb 09, I’ve put 5620 miles on my car.  On average, that’s about 18 mile per day, 130 miles per week, 550 miles per month, and 6725 per year.

I’d like to think that that’s not too bad, especially since I’m averaging about 16,000 miles/year on that car since I purchased it.  And in fact, I do seem to be doing a little bit better than the average American: According to Brighter Planet, my auto-based carbon footprint is 12% below the national average.  Now I’m not a particularly “green”guy, so I don’t really know how much that means, but I’m pretty sure it means I’m not making like the Road Warrior and living in my car as it rolls down the highway.  However, I still think I can do better.

As I said above, I’m not a particularly green kind of guy, so I’m not trying to save the planet or anything, but I am a bicycle guy, and I am always looking for ways to get more riding in.  Plus, my belly is learning new and effective strategies in my ongoing battle with banishing it from my body, so more exercise is always a good thing (at the very least I can eat more pie without getting too much fatter).  And so I’ve decided to try to ride more and drive less in the upcoming year.  So I’m setting a goal to reduce my monthly driving mileage by 50% by the end of the year.

Now, as with anything,there are always some caveats.  I don’t plan on reducing my driving that much straight-away.  For one thing, it’s December, and it’s starting to get friggin’ cold out there.  I do ride in the winter, but I don’t have as much winter gear  as I would like to ride all the time in the winter (plus none of my bikes are set up for riding in any snow or ice, so on the rare occasions that happens here in the Metroplex, I’ll be hopping back in the car), plus I’m not really set up yet for larger trips to the store — all I have are my messenger bag and a rack that’s calling out for a basket.  Throughout the year, I’ll be working on getting more utility gear so more and more of my shopping trips (like those to Costco) can be done by bike as well.

And so, my plan is to try to shave another 10% per month off of my total mileage, so that by the end of May I’m down to about 250-275 miles per month by car.  I suppose that I should also add the caveat that this doesn’t include miles driven for work purposes (not commuting, but things like business trips).  I’ve recently developed a full-blown fear of flying (which I would love to get over, but I don’t see that happening any time soon), so all of my travel for work is going to involve a rental car or a train.  And since one round-trip to Iowa would eat up seven months of my driving allowance, I simply can’t count those miles towards my total.

Anyway, I’ll be checking in here regularly, updating y’all on my progress towards my goals and maybe even sharing spiffy graphs or pics of poorly assembled bike trailers that nearly cause me to tumble over into traffic.