One fault of my employer is that I get charged for parking. $647, once per year. This gives me convenient parking, in a deck right next to my building.

There’s an alternate plan, wherein I can pay $25 per year, and pay $5 each time I park a vehicle. It’s not as convenient, but is pretty close to my work.

So the pay-per-park plan has a break-even point at 126 days: if I park 126 days, it saves me money, and it I park 127 days, it costs me money. Last year, I had 227 complete work days. Using 2011 as a baseline, I would have to bike 101 days in the next year to not lose money on this scheme. Any more days than that, and I’m putting money back in my pocket. I would need to bike 44% of the time, 2.2 days per week.

Maximum possible savings: $632 (yay!). Maximum possible loss: $503 (boo!).

Beautiful day for a ride this morning. Weather said 60 degrees, 80% humidity, 50% chance of rain. Radar looked safe, and the rain didn’t show.

My daughter's commute

My daughter rode to school on her usual seat, sitting on my Jandd Expedition Rack and hanging on to the seat post for stability.

Last week, I tried to get an Xtracycle stoker bar for her, but it didn’t fit my 30mm seat post. Idiot tax for not measuring before purchase: I’ve got to return that. The Xtracycle customer service seems top notch, though, so I don’t think that it will be a problem.

Racing the sunrise

It ended up being a beautiful ride. I shed my jacket as soon as I got moving. It’s insanely warm today.

I’ve decided to make a change: I’m going to park the car and bike to work. And I’m going to blog about it, for some reason. I’ll be aiming for shorter posts, more frequent, rather than in-depth treatises.

Wish me luck.