Scooter Calculator

The "Between Two Rivers Scooter Club" has put together a web application, with information drawn from the US Energy Information Administration, to give you an idea of the impact riding instead of driving has on the Earth and the US economy. It's worth a look, if nothing else. Based on the vehicle I drove before becoming a 365 day biker, here are my stats:

Samuel, based on the above information, you burn 175.44 gallons of fuel in your Yamaha Majesty each year, and that amount of fuel costs you $359.65. In your other vehicles you burn 0.00 gallons of fuel, which cost you $0.00.
If you did not have your bike, you would be forced to put 10,000.00 miles on your other vehicle each year. This would cost you $1,025.00 in fuel charges each year. Having your bike saves you $665.35 in fuel costs each year.
Having and using your scooter also has in impact on the economy. According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S.A. currently imports about 10 million barrels of oil each day. Each barrel of oil contains 42 gallons of crude. Each barrel produces about 21 gallons of gasoline, as well as other products.
If you did not use your bike, you would burn 500.00 gallons of fuel, but with your bike you only burn 175.44 gallons of gas each year. Therefore, using your bike conserves 324.56 gallons of gas each year. Translated into barrels of oil, that represents 15.46 barrels of oil that did not need to be refined for the gas you used.
If 655,180 people in this country rode a scooter like you, an entire days worth of oil imports into this country would not be required, resulting in more than $500 million dollars that the country would not need to devote towards foreign oil purchases.

Click the title link to try it for yourself.

Why I Ride

As a kind of introduction to my two wheeled world, I thought I'd try to cover my basic reasons for riding instead of driving.

First of all, and most importantly, it makes me happy. I commute, on average, 45 minutes to work, and back each day. That's a bare minimum of an hour and a half on the road every day. When traveling in a car, that time was mostly spent being stressed because of traffic, or being annoyed by the lack of anything worth listening to on the radio, or any other number of negative emotion causing things. On a bike, my first thought is always towards the world around me, which is good for a number of reasons. I see things I would of missed in a car. I more fully experience the world by seeing it, instead of just passing it like it's in my way. Basically, an hour and a half each day, and usually more, is a large percentage of my life, and I'd hate to spend it in a cage, waiting until I get to the world to start living.

Then, there's efficiency. In my opinion, my Majesty is the model of efficiency. For starters, it gets a regular 55-60 mpg. I spent as much on gas in a week driving a car as I spend in a month on my bike, and I never decide not to go somewhere now because I want to save gas. That's not the only way my bike is more efficient than my car though. Basically, it does everything I need it to, without doing much more. I do most of my traveling by myself, or with one other person. Think how much more power is required to move all the extra weight of a bunch of empty seats. My bike is perfectly capable of getting me and Erika where we're going. As for storage, there's a pretty sizeable trunk under the seat, big enough for most things I need to carry. On the rare occasion that I need to carry more, I have a very handy set of homemade saddlebags, and you'd really be surprised how much can be held under a cargo net and some bungy cords. The minimalized aspect of carrying capacity, also has a tendency to show what you really need and what you don't. Much like in the kitchen, I don't believe in having things in my bike that are uni-taskers. Everything has multiple purposes and uses, and nothing is wasted. Personally, I think this is just a healthier way of living.

Finally, there are the financial benefits. The bike itself costs considerably less than any car, even a used car with any dependability to it at all, and I know that I can depend on my bike. Also insurance costs next to nothing, especially since it's a scooter. I could buy another bike for what I paid for the minimum insurance on my van. It costs hardly anything to maintain as well, since it's a fairly simple machine, as opposed to cars these days with all sorts of electronic doo-dads and complicated computers to malfunction. (Side note: My mom's truck has been in the shop for the past two weeks because there's an electrical short that they can't find. To even find the short is going to cost a fair amount of money, because they have to add inline fuses to every wire in the truck to see which one is tripping. Then they can start talking about how much it will cost to fix whatever problem they happen to find. Of course, this probably says as much about the inefficiency of auto mechanics as it does about the vehicle itself, but that's a whole seperate issue.)

Granted, the two-wheeled life isn't for eveybody, and it does take a certain level of dedication different from that of a car, and I know that not everybody would get the same joy and satisfaction I get from riding, but these are my reasons. Do with them what you will.