I've owned a motorcycle now for 10 years.  In the last few years with the gas prices soaring I've told myself every spring that I'm going to ride to work no matter what to save money on gas.   My truck gets 13 mpg in town, my bike gets 55+ mpg.  It's a no brainer, taking the bike.  Eventually, every year I get lazy and instead of taking the time to put on rain gear or warmer clothing, I hop in the truck.  NOT THIS YEAR.  Here's my challenge:

- Absolutely ride to work every day the weather is nice.  Even if I'm tired or wake up late, get on the bike. ( I wake up at 4:45 in the morning, sometimes I feel like I'm too groggy to ride.)

- If the forecast calls for rain, ride anyway.  The only exception is if it's POURING rain in the morning, because even with decent rain gear, you sometimes still get wet and I don't want to have soggy pants at work to start off the day.

- Buy only 1 tank of gas for my truck a month thru September.   I get about 300 miles to a tank.  That should be more than enough for me if I'm also using my motorcycle to commute.

Save enough money on gas to cover my motorcycle costs.   I still owe money on my bike, with insurance and payments and maintenance it's probably around $130 a month that I pay.  I drive on average about 20 miles total each day.  My motorcycle gets 55 mpg, compared to only 13 mpg with my F-150.  So, doing the math:  If I drove 600 miles a month (Which is about average including weekend travel) at today's gas price $4.19 a gallon, it would cost me  $45.71 a month for gas.   But that's traveling everyday on my motorcycle.   For my truck the cost would be $193.38.  So going on extremes here it would be a $147 saving a month on my motorcycle essentially paying for itself.  That also doesn't include long trips that I need to make to my folks on the range.

So part of the reason I'm blogging all of this is because I need to hold myself accountable and not get lazy and drive my truck to work on those rough mornings.

I'll keep you posted.   I'm off to a good start.  It was finally warm enough yesterday to ride my bike to work (above freezing is my cut off), and I rode again today!

 

 

 

 

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