On 30 September 2010, I had the most relaxed motorcycle commute to work. The morning air was a crisp cool and the mostly southbound ride was accompanied by a gentle tailwind. The traffic was light and the engine felt nimble. Cruising at a steady speed under 50mph, the motorcycle disappeared in sensation. All that was left was the feeling of propelling through the morning mist…like flying.

The same tailwind had grown in might in the afternoon. Now, a heavy headwind, the commute back only affirmed my decision of giving up motorcycling. That Thursday was the last day I rode my motorcycle as a primary mode of transportation. Now with an expired tag, it sits in my front yard awaiting a novice motorcyclist to buy it.

I rode my xtraycle to work on Friday, thus closing the week and the two years of my car-free existance. Early morning Saturday, I juggled the local JTA bus transit and picked up my car from my friend. I had already purchased the car earlier that week and let my friend, the seller use it till Saturday before he bid adieu to USA and moved to Brasil with his family.

I started this blog when I went car-light and supplemented my commutes with my bicycle. I went car free on 17 October 2008 and it has been a heck of a ride since then. This blog has been instrumental in channeling my thoughts and ideas on transportation in general and bicycling in particular over the years. Now that I am back to depending on a car full time, it is only apt to shut down this blog.

I will continue to ride my bicycle to work a few times a week.

I will also continue blogging on Finding Mukherjee | Blog. You may subscribe to my universal feed here.

The real world is a combination of what we are supposed to do and where we do it. It generally involves buying a car and a single family home with fake grass and a barbecue grill in the back yard. I put that concept of the real world to a test. In May 2008, I started riding a bicycle to work and grew independent from the car. In October 2008, I sold my car and went car free. In September 2009, I gave up dealing with insolent motorists in suburban Jacksonville and decided to move to Riverside, a part of town built on a human scale.

Motorcycle Ownership

I had decided to not own a car for as long as I could manage it. A voluntary car-free state is a protest against the city of Jacksonville’s mandate to buy a car. Being car free allows me to be more environmentally responsible. To be able to commute from Riverside to work, a distance of 12 miles, I decided to buy a motorcycle. Not wanting to pay too much of the car tax, I bought the cheapest motorcycle in the market. To keep my mode of transportation reliable, I bought a brand new motorcycle. In December 2009, I moved to Riverside. I have been commuting on a motorcycle and sometimes on a bicycle from Riverside to work every day since the beginning of 2010.

Benefits of the Motorcycle

I get around 80 miles per gallon. My carbon footprint is very small and I fulfilled my life long dream of owning a motorcycle.

Drawbacks

This is a very light motorcycle and Jacksonville is fairly windy. At even a 10 mile per hour wind, the motorcycle gets pushed around on the road. This is similar to the feeling if you were to ride a bicycle and someone pushed your shoulder to the side. It gets difficult to keep my position on the lane. I generally drop speed to gain front tire traction to be able to steer myself back to where I was. This gets worse when it is windy and rainy. Most of my commute is on Phillips Highway. It is an old road and the center of each lane is very uneven. When I get pushed from my left half position into the center of the lane, the motorcycle gets even more unstable. This results from the weak forks and fork mounts.

At short stretches of highway, the grooves cut on the surface tracks the front tire giving the motorcycle a mind of its own. This gets worse crossing the tall Acosta Bridge which has rain grooves and higher wind speeds.

Maintenance cost of motorcycles is very high unless you can do it yourself.

Seven months of Riding

By the first three months till March 2010, I was considering moving to Belize. It was the coldest winter in Jacksonville in decades. It was extra cold for me on a motorcycle. Some mornings, the wind chill would be around 15 degrees. My fingers have been so cold that I was unable to remove my gloves and unstrap my helmet.

When it started warming up, the weather was perfect for motorcycle riding. This lasted probably 3 weeks till the pressure system in the Gulf started working and the winds picked up. I remember my first time in a 14 mile per hour cross wind taken by surprise not knowing what to do. I remember struggling to keep my lane position and doing everything in my power to not end up in the ditch where the wind was taking me. Between April and July, there have been only a handful of days where motorcycle commute was fun. Mornings are usually uneventful but it is the afternoon commutes that create stress. Continued added stress leads to fatigue.

Solving the wind problem

Between the motorcycle’s weight of 300 lbs and mine of 220 lbs, the center of mass of the two of us sits fairly high up. This makes it easy for the wind to create an impact on the direction of the motorcycle. Scouring numerous forums and blogs about people facing similar problems with the wind, I discovered that no one faces this at under 20 mph winds. They all ride heavy motorcycles.

Therefore, buying a heavier motorcycle with thicker forks, sturdier fork mounts and thicker tires will greatly solve my woes. Alas, even a used heavier motorcycle (650 cc to 800 cc) costs between $3,000 and $4,000. Incidentally, a coworker is moving to Brazil and is selling an old Toyota in great shape for under $4,000. I am jumping on this opportunity.

The Real World

This marks my re-entry into the so called real world. It starts by buying a car. The feelings associated with buying a car now are so different than the feelings I had when I bought my first car in 2006. Now, I view a car as a bloated and inefficient tool that is unofficially mandated by the city. Back in 2006, my car was a toy, an extension of my limbs and a mode of transportation to the nearest money-draining chain restaurant.

I re-enter the real world with desperation and need of a car, not a want. I re-enter the real world with open eyes, not eyes masked by social norms designed to impress faceless members of society. I will always regret that I wont be car free anymore.

Riverside has spoilt me. With its pedestrian scale street layout and popular bicycling culture, it has kept me in a world of illusion. The bicycle is revered here and one on a bicycle feels like Guliver in Liliput. Bicycles have several adventages like easy front door parking, easy access to parks, less or negligible car expense etc. like Gilliver was a giant in Liliput and he had several advantages due to his size.

I rode down to Mandarin to meet some friends and ride bicycles. I started the ride with the evening’s storm chasing me. I pedaled furiously to stay out of the wrath of the showers and San Jose Blvd took me out of the path of the storm quickly. I didn’t realize that I was steadily riding into another planet. A parallel planet. The planet of ranch styled homes built for cars.

To the credit of the ‘planning’ department, the parking lane provided along Hendricks between San Marco and Baymeadows is quite nice. Other than the few times you have to move into 50 mph traffic to pass the cars parked on this lane, it pretty much keeps a cyclist out of traffic. Once you reach Baymeadows, it is a different story.

The parking lane becomes a car lane. It is less than 14 feet wide and infested with motorists who haven’t seen a bicycle there before. Everything built here is to the scale of cars. The six lanes of traffic, the numerous strip mall shopping centers with driveways jutting out into the main road, the people stranded on one side of the road looking for ways to cross etc. Even the traffic lights are made for the speed and acceleration of cars. The five of us on bicycles started to cross several traffic lights when they turned amber while we had just stepped into the intersection of a six lane road. Needless to say, the intersecting traffic got their green light while we were still in the intersection.

A bicyclist feels like Gulliver in Brobdingnag where he was the size of a thumb and at a serious disadvantage.

The real problem is in the planning done decades ago. There is no blaming anyone for it now. It has been done and over with. The question is what could be done today to ease transportation issues. When people have to make a choice between car related expenses and food for their kids, it is not a healthy society. This is not a developed society anyone wants to grow up in. This is not a society anyone wants to leave behind. A frequent and well networked bus service and street cars supplementing some form of rail infrastructure comes to mind. Rail not only makes it easier to travel the length and breadth of a large city, it also brings economic development.

Yehuda Moon has the right attitude for riding in this traffic. This comic strip and the company of my friends is what kept me sane during my trip.

Seven people showed up, including me. The excellent company made up for the lack of participation by far.

The ride was promoted paper free. No posters and leaflets. In the age of blogs, RSS feeds and feed readers, it is pointless to print posters. Ride information was shared on Urban Core and Bikejax, both very  popular websites. I also created a facebook event where 30 or more people agreed to attend in spite of the Tour de Cure going on. Lakshore Shwinn, a local bike shop that carries xtracycles also sent messages on twitter and facebook.

Many people who missed the bicycle ride are probably at work watch oil spewing out of the extraction site on bp’s live feed. They shake their heads in disappointment to bp’s lack of proper oil spill containment and to the damage done to sea life and beaches. They may even shed a tear at the sight of oil drenched birds. They prepare to end their work day and make their way home in the comfort of their gasoline powered cars. Over the weekend, they will probably make their way to the grocery store or a restaurant in their cars, run into friends and talk about boycotting bp, then drive their cars back home.

I like to hope that people would do something to lessen their usage of gasoline. It causes pollution, spills and war. It also supports the car tax. I hope they replace some of their trips with a bicycle. Even a short trip.

I have been riding two days to work and am upping it to three. I am supplementing my bicycle commute to work with my motorcycle. 14 miles is quite long.

I am also drooling on the pictures from the Cargo Bike Race in Copenhagen.

A friend recently moved next door and her work is literally a stone throw away from her apartment. She get a lunch break which she uses to get out of the office and walk her dog. She willingly agreed to walk Laya for me if I chose to ride my bicycle to work. Since I am not in the best of shape, I am only riding to work twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday. I want to get to 3 days and eventually all 5 days.

My work is a 28 mile round trip and it involves climbing the Acosta bridge. The morning rides are very refreshing. The afternoon rides are a little tiring. Between the sun and 5 PM rush hour traffic, I am fighting several battles on my bicycle.

I am riding my xtracycle to work. It is the only long distance bicycle with multiple gears and a rock solid construction. Moreover, the heavy bike gives me a good workout. This is my second week and I can already feel the difference. Moreover, this is an appropriate activity for Bike Month rather than group ride with police escorts like this one: link

Riding a bicycle does not save me a whole lot of money since I am only offsetting minor wear and tear on the motorcycle and negligible fuel usage. Yup, I have been getting over 75 miles per gallon on the little Kawasaki. All I did was reduce my speed on Phillips Highway from 50 to 45. Enjoy the graphs and charts. Happy motoring!

Well, I am sure every country in America does not have the right to bear arms. Semantics aside, I don’t get any reason other than it is their right. The question, “What is the reason it is easy to walk out of a gun store with a semi automatic AR-15?” is answered by rephrasing the question itself, “It is our right to bear arms“. It starts to sound like an infant not wanting to give up their toys, not a reasonable explanation supporting an amendment made to the constitution by the Founding Fathers.

Don’t even get me started on the Concealed Weapons Permit (wikipedia link).

I went shooting at a gun range this weekend. My friend owns a couple of hand guns and we shot them. I shot approximately 100 bullets, most on a Beretta 9mm. My first shot was with the 9mm. It took me by surprise. This gun handled and shot a lot better than the Sig Sauer P238. I even managed to hit a couple of bulls eyes. One in the chest and one in the head.

The mechanics of a gun, like the mechanics of anything well engineered fascinate me. I was excited to operate it, much like I was excited to operate a lathe for the first time. Except, on a lathe, I created a product of value. With the gun, I shot up a target. After we were done with shooting, I was not overcome by a sense of manliness but by a sense of satisfaction and respect for a gun. A bullet packs a lot of power and I hope to never use it. It was also an enjoyable experience.

It has not changed my stand against the second amendment. Cars are not too far from guns. I had a few close calls while riding my bicycle to the gun range. Nothing spectacular, just normal Jacksonville traffic.

It is more difficult to acquire a license to drive a car than it is to purchase a gun and bullets. Allowing motorists to talk on cell phones, change radio channels, make conversations with co-passengers and listen to music at a loud volume while driving is quite irresponsible. A car can be very dangerous even at low speed impacts for people who they hit. With this logic, I should be against the DMV licensing and driving rules too. Well I am and I think everyone should be subject to a mandatory full fledged driving test every other year and all cars should go through an inspection every year.

Just as there is a possibility I might purchase a car again, there is a possibility I might buy a gun. The difference is that if I ever give up my car free life, I will buy a completely utilitarian car. Contrarily, I’d purchase a gun purely as a hobby. I don’t have anything to protect. They can steal my motorcycle, TV and laptop. Everything else is old and used. It is not worth protecting these assets by having someone’s blood on my hands. Protecting a family is different. I don’t have wife and kids and am therefore not qualified to comment on it.

Even if I ever buy a car, I will continue to ride bicycles for transportation. On the other hand, if I ever own a gun, I’ll never carry it concealed.

Days like today make me evaluate my stand. It was starting to rain by the time I was leaving work. I left early to beat the rain. The rain caught up with me by the time I reached I95, the last 4 miles of my 13 mile commute. It is here that grooves are cut along the road to help cars. Motorcycles be damned.

Climbing the Acosta bridge was very challenging. It is already super windy on the bridge. Even more grooves give the motorcycle a mind of its own. By the time the motorcycle climbed near the top of the bridge, the cross wind started to push it into the next lane. The grooves cut on the road aid the wind making the motorcycle even more unstable. There was nothing I could do to compensate the shift. A heavier motorcycle will compensate for the wind and the grooves but it costs more money. If I money was not an object, I would never protest against the car tax.

I reduced my speed, stepped down a gear while making a mental note to not use the front brake. The red Camaro behind me was surprisingly understanding and kept a safe distance while I negotiated a freshly wet curving exit lane. I later saw the sticker “Harley Davidson” on the rear window. They probably knew the limitations of a motorcycle on a windy rainy day on top of a bridge.

This somewhat righteous protest of mine is based on an absolute truth. The truth that even a minimum wage employee is required to either buy a car and pay running costs or waste time and effort waiting for busses.

I feel compelled to carry out this protest even if nobody is listening. This protest was never supposed to be easy.

Most roadway design engineers are not motorcyclists or bicyclists for that matter. These two groups usually get left out during planning. When a co-worker asked me how my commute has been lately, I decided to bring forth the issue of grooves cut on the road surface. I made a case that it is designed for four wheeled traffic and is potentially unsafe for motorcyclists. Tires get caught in the grooves which make the motorcycle follow the grooves till they get traction back. This happens back and forth and the motorcyclist is helpless in controlling the machine efficiently. Lighter motorcycles like mine feel it more than some heavier ones. An accident at interstate speeds with moving traffic can be fatal.

Motorcyclists are about 2% of registered vehicles. My coworkers made a point that roads are designed for the majority. They argued that it is my choice of lifestyle to ride a motorcycle and the engineers should not have to bend over backwards to accommodate my personal life choices. I am sure some of his comments were friendly banter but it made me think about concept of designing for majority. It effectively puts a price-tag on the value of a motorcyclist’s life. What is an acceptable price of anyone’s life?

What determines majority?

Is it just number of registered cars v/s motorcycles? The cars win hands down. I have designed a different method of scoring majority that is fairer and somewhat biased.

It has two factors:

Factor One > Occupants per 100 lbs

Factor Two > Gallons per 100 mile per occupant

Assumptions:

• Average motorcycle = Suzuki SV 650
• Average Car = Honda Civic
• One occupant per car
• One occupant per motorcycle
• Fuel efficiencies from company websites

Factor Two – Gallons per 100 mile per occupant. A 650 cc motorcycle gets around 55 mpg (city + hwy). Therefore, the single rider uses 1.81 gallons per 100 miles travelled. A 2010 Honda Civic gets 29 mpg (city + hwy). A single occupant uses 3.44 gallons every 100 miles driven. Therefore, a Civic user is 1.9 times the fuel footprint of a motorcycle. Factor Two result = 1.9

Factor One multiplied to Factor Two gives 11.37. Therefore, each motorcycle on the road gets multiplied by 11.37 to become a car equivalent. With motorcycles being 2% of registered vehicles, for every 98 cars on the road, there were 2 motorcycles. Now, for every 98 cars on the road, there are 2 X 11.37 = 22.75 motorcycles on the road. That is a share of 18% of traffic. Even though a minority, it is not negligible any more.

There are factors such as less wear on the road by motorcycles due to low weight thereby requiring less road maintenance that I have not considered. I have also not considered how motorcycles are unfavorable in adverse weather conditions since I ride all year and it has nothing to do with considering roadway design. Noise pollution on some larger cruisers and choppers is also not considered since plenty of cars have loud exhausts and a lot of them also blare loud music. Most motorcycles don’t come with sound systems.

I am a little biased on my two factor calculation but every road designer and transportation engineer is biased towards cars. I don’t feel guilty.

All of the above rant and pseudo-mathematics mostly try to convey that cars take a front seat in any planning. Cars are convenient, safe, protected from elements and quick. Motorcycles are not that convenient, safe with proper training, not protected from elements at all but are quick. Bicycles are neither of the three but probably the safest. Bicycles are convenient if one lives in a bicycle-centric city. Cars do cost the most amount of money to purchase and operate. They suck people deeper into dependence than a commuter motorcycle does. Yet, we promote it.

We are supposed to be the smarter of the mammals!

It is a small sized board that was light enough to be pinned to my cubicle wall. It was the statistics tracker for my car-light days.

Since I was sparsely driving my car, I decided to track what I was exactly doing.

• The first line says when I last filled up my gas tank. 14th august had been 26 days since I I updated the board last. I put my car up for sale (link)  in the beginning of October which shows when I stopped updating the board.
• The next line tracks the gallons used since the last fill up. In 26 days, I had driven 143 miles at the rate of 24.5 miles per gallon and used 5.8 gallons.
• I had ridden 923 miles since I started commuting by bike in the end of May 2008. A coworker added “Days ridden in Tropical Storm : 1″ since I rode to work and back on one of the first days of tropical storm Fay hitting us. Riding in strong winds and rain was challenging but I lived just two miles away. That was also the day I did not get honked or yelled at.
• I tracked days that I had not driven the car. This prompted me to question the times I did drive thereby thinking of alternatives. The xtracycle was purchased out of this statistic.
• My goal was to ride atleast 250 miles a month. Below that, I measured the miles I rode each month. Since I stopped tracking by the end of September, I never updated this board.

Discovering this white board brought me back good memories. Those were very passionate days and played a strong role in making me what I am today. It is because of those days, and that whiteboard that I joined forces with Matt at Bikejax and executed a successful bike valet. We are expanding it this weekend due to higher numbers of commuters to the Arts Market.

In order to pay for these basic necessities, we have devised a system of compensation for work or service that creates a product that other people want to buy. We go to work everyday, get paid, pay our taxes and so on. Sometimes, we have money left over that we try to save for a rainy day or retirement, take a vacation, sponsor our hobbies or just plain consumerism. These are indulgences.

A car is something we buy to commute in a safe and protected way, though the safety of commuting in a car is questionable. When you are made to buy a car due to the design of the city’s infrastructure, the car becomes a necessity. It is not a cheap necessity either. A brand new car kept for 10 years with insurance and gas will cost over $200 a month, usually more than utilities to power your home. That is $2,400 a year. Most people do not keep their car for 10 years. For the first five years, that car costs over $500 a month or $6,000 a year. This car puts us in a random environment of traffic, made random by the presence of other drivers. Random = increased risk of an accident.

Mass transit, though costs extra tax revenue, and in turn the payment of extra taxes take the human element out of the commuting equation resulting in a safer method of commuting. The absence of mass transit or an effective mass transit will compel people to have to spend on a car. Such is the case with the City of Jacksonville. They provide an infrequent bus service with insufficient routes to conquer the vase expanse of the city. They also insult us with a skyway system that starts at a parking lot in the middle of nowhere and takes you to a convention center with ample on site parking, a college and a few other businesses. It does not even take you to the sports arenas.

Therefore, the citizens of Jacksonville FL, mostly republican, pay the car tax because it is a necessity, a need, not a want any more. No one protests at a tea party.

The struggling citizen who work hard to make a living are left behind to fend for themselves. They have to chose between a budget for either gas, car payments and insurance or quality food to feed their children. They choose the high-fructose corn syrup laden preservative infused cheap foods. They would like to pay premium for food not car but they don’t have a choice. They are not given a choice. Who cares about them anyway?

Some people understand the severity of this issue and protest on a very popular website namely metrojacksonville.com. I wish to protest by not owning a car. I moved recently to a walkable part of the city that put me out of bicycling range to work but I did not buy a car. If I was to pay a tax and had the choice to decide how much to pay I will try to pay the least. I wanted my mode of transportation to be reliable and requiring low maintenance. I bought the cheapest motorcycle in the market for $3,000. The insurance on that cycle is $20 a month. It gives me about 70 miles per gallon. The monthly cost on the motorcycle is $100, including depreciation. This is my protest to the city. This is my protest against the car tax.