I hopped on the scale recently (something I’ve never owned before, and still rarely step on), the other day, and saw a number that was new to me: 167.5.

This is the most I’ve ever weighed, topping my post-Katrina expansion. And I don’t really care about that, because it’s all relative. I don’t care that I weigh that, I care that my BMI is high. I also care that I wasn’t able to button a pair of pants.

The problem is I have become sedentary. I’m traditionally used to a much more active lifestyle, and that just isn’t happening these days. Between the day job, the design/development LLC that Bea and I formed, the housework, and the less-than-happy knees, I just haven’t been exercising. And I /need/ to. I want to.

I just have to make the time. And I am. My friends Chum Dumpster and Everything Butt Sex have been meeting up at NOMA M-W-F at 6am-ish to run 5k. Chum and EBS are hashers who have been concentrating on the drinking part of hashing over the running part. While they run a slower pace than I do, they’re doing the hard part: getting up and doing it. This is what I need. So, Mondays I plan on bringing one dog, and Friday the other, leaving Wednesdays to myself. The pups need exercise too, especially chubby little Indy.

And as for the knees/etc, I’ve already taken the first step, so to speak: I went to the Louisiana Running Co to get fitted for a new pair of shoes: K-Swiss K-Ona C. They’re meshy on top and drain out of the bottom! THE BOTTOM! I really liked that place, too. Just a two-person startup, and I didn’t feel like I was being “sold to” – he just wanted to help me run how I wanted to (no races / half-marathons / full marathons). I definitely recommend them.

Now, obviously running won’t fix the problem alone. I have plans to mountain bike (at least a few laps at the spillway) every few weeks, and do Wii Fit on an almost daily basis.

There are of course dietary concerns, and all I’m going to say is that I’m already making a concerted effort to eat better, and especially cut out as much high fructose corn syrup / crap foods overall. I also understand that it’s just not practical to go whole-hog on that effort, so it’ll be within reason. The last thing I want to is stress out about what I’m eating. If you are (or if you aren’t) familiar with the next handful of months in NOLA, then you should read Pistolette’s excellent rationalization on eating and goals in NOLA.

And as usual, she has inspired Bea and I with our life this year. We have a list of goals, broken down into months, for the year. We’re gonna get a lot of shit done that we’ve been putting off. We’re tired of a project being 85% done.

 

Molly and her flipped and chopped drop bars:

 
Not anymore! I threw some cruiser bars on her, dropped the seat a smidge, and she’s a whole different bike! I love riding it again:

 

 
An unforseen summer-time bonus is that sitting much more upright tends to limit my top speed – in the old config, I think I topped it out at ~32mph on level ground. Not so much now. I still have much higher efficiency than a standard cruiser, so 15mph now doesn’t even come close to breaking a sweat. It didn’t make me sweat on the old setup at that speed, but I tended to just plain ride faster – I couldn’t help it. 15mph or faster on a cruiser takes much more effort.

Well, Jon did some great work – even went so far as to install a new chain and replace my handlebar tape.

Unfortunately, a resident prankster (let’s call him Centurian™ to protect the less-than-innocent) was caught while in the process of, uh, “accessorizing” Molly (the bike).

This bike has two “Guardian Angels” let’s call them. The most prominent is a green monkey that came with my most-awesome green tuxedo jacket (it has green velvet lapels!) named Julius. Julius has been affixed to this bike for a few years now, and it’s a wonder he has yet to be defaced or kidnapped.

Until now, that is.

Apparently Centurian™ (say that as Michael Palin in Life of Brian as you can) has a tendency to bring out people’s inner gimp:

 
He came back gagged, covered in electrical tape, and a 9v battery hooked up to his nipples.

Sadness. Perhaps I shall stwike the centuwian. Stwike him vewy woughwy. And fwow him to the gwound.

The trip by car rolls in at about 21 miles, and is slightly longer by bike ( about 24 miles ) and bicycles are not allowed on the interstate. She basically rides through the Marigny/Quarter/CBD down Royal St./St. Charles Avenue, and cuts to Magazine at Lee Circle, taking that all the way down to Audubon Park and the Mississippi River levee path, which is free of cars.

She’s still using a Scattante Zonal road bike on load from a co-worker, but has her eyes on, nay, lusts for a 2008 Bianchi Dama Bianca Elena. Behold:

It’s not super-girly, it’s purple (heellllooooooo, she loves that purp), is a pretty decent bike, and perhaps most important of all, would be hers.

The problem is the budgets here at La Iglesia are a little tighter, and shelling out ~$1,500 for a new bike isn’t super fiscally responsible. Now I’ve been told by my friends at Bicycle Michael’s that if I were to provide them with the bike size, they’d hold one for her, which is great.

I’ve decided that as an incentive, I’d make some sort of log to help visualize her goal, and her status on earning the $1500 in blood (hopefully not), sweat (summer is upon us), and tears (again, hopefully not). I built a little system I’ve named “Gas Money Records“.

Sometimes I’m too clever for my own good.

Anyways, every day she rides to / from work, she enters the data and it calculates how much she’s saved. The part that I found most interesting was the breakdown of gas vs. maintenance. You end up sending about 10¢/mile on gas, and over 30¢/mile on oil, tires, maintenance, etc. I used commute solutions as a reference, and left out much of the expenses associated with driving: insurance, tax, parking, tolls, travel time, accidents, finance charges, etc. We don’t have tolls (except for the lousy West Bank), and if your car was parked at home you’d still have to pay taxes, insurance, etc.

Surprisingly, it costs her about $9 per day commute! This adds up to over $2,300 per work year! At that $9/day rate, Bea could pay for the bike in about 8 months (if she commuted by bike every day).

If you check it out, you can do your own calculations – leaving out the savings goal will show you what you’d spend in a work year commuting, or you can set a savings goal and see how long it would take you. It’s truly surprising how much can save by even commuting by bike once or twice a week. I don’t think I even need to touch on the health benefits of bicycle commuting.