I just put $88.00 in my pickup truck. I have driven to work once a week or so for the last 3-4 weeks, since I last filled up. My truck was completely outta fuel this AM when I needed to take my son to football. 88 bucks is way too much money for fuel for a week, which is not quite what it would cost to drive all week. I just stared this thread because I am going to pick up my rear wheel that I had rebuilt after buying a new one a few weeks ago. So that is $400 in the rear wheel alone 300 for the new one and 100 for the rebuild. 5 weeks or less of riding. I also ordered a new front wheel. Hope my wife never starts reading BF. But I think I will someday break even, if of course, I dont upgrade first.

I broke even a long time ago. I'm riding about 6000 miles / year that I would otherwise drive. That's about $960 in fuel I'm not spending every year at current pricing. Considering oil, depreciation and just the various expensive other stuff (tires, shocks, breakdowns) that mileage contributes too and I'm far ahead.

There is a lot more to riding than saving money, but once you have ridden enough to offset the initial outlay (bike, fenders, panniers, lights) the savings add up.

Bike maintenance seems to be lower once you get established. I go thorugh tires once a year ($50), a patch kit every year or so ($5), a chain and cog set every three years ($50/3) and a new NiMH for the light every three years ($100/3).

i dont drive much, ive been holding off on filling up my tank again (still have 1/4) because the prices went up again after the last few hurricanes...

Gas is still way too cheep. In the US, we're (the government) subsidizing gas cost so that people don't really understand how much a gallon of gas really costs. Gas should be well over $5/gal on it's way to $10/gal if you took away all the perks given to the oil corps and attached the bills associated with keeping imports at low prices (military).

Five years from now you'll be looking back at $88 to fill your tank with nostalgia.

I bought my vehicle in 2004. When shopping even then, if the sticker said less than 30MPG I would move on. I own a Pontiac Vibe and average 37 MPG with a 10 gallon tank. So my average fill up is a little over $30.

I agree, gas should be even more expensive, but that's assuming that the extra money would be used to pay for externalities of burning gasoline, and that we got the money back as tax cuts elsewhere. That would never happen. The money would go into someone's pocket and you'd wind up paying in BOTH places.
So for now the people burning gasoline (I'm one of them, we're not at all car free) get subsidies to pay for all of the many ways in which the oil society costs us, and even someone who's car free is forced to pay most of them.

My wife recently bought a new car. That's her choice. When BS'ing with the sales people at the dealership (Ford) they asked when I was going to replace my 12 year old car. I told them "Well, I ride a bike mostly, but the minute you guys have a vehicle that gets over 50 MPG for < $15K, or a full-electric vehicle, call me and I'll be over with my checkbook." I don't expect to have to spend any money anytime soon.

Honestly, if I needed a car right now there are plenty of old heaps that get > 30 MPG. A friend of mine bought an old Saturn sedan for $600 4 years ago, it's still running great and gets > 40 MPG. It looks like s**t, but what do I care?

Agreed. How exactly externalized costs get externalized in the first place and then stay that way to keep a populus fat and happy is something that would be a conspiracy if it weren't so institutionalized, and practically a birthright to its alleged beneficiaries.

Of course, I am happy with anything that has us collectively look at and then reduce our US per-capita energy footprint. High gas prices for any reason at all seems to have done the trick, but maybe this time it will stay with us.

I'm hoping to find one of these older efficient vehicles on Craigslist. My car gets 12 mpg no matter how I drive. Fortunately, I can use the bike for most trips to campus (about 40 miles per week), but there are certain trips I need the car for, and I'm dreading having to fill it up. I can't sell it because it's my parents', so I'm looking for a cheap ride to supplant it. I currently save about $13 per week riding instead of driving.

I should have a gas guzzler to make it seem like I'm "paying off" a bike quicker. At the rate I'm going now, it'll take me about three years to offset the cost of a $1500 bike.

Call it carbon trading

And here I thought this thread was going to be about bike fuel.

Just this morning I stopped at the diner on the way to work to fuel my bike. Scrambled special (scrambled eggs with onions, wheat toast, home fries) $2.75, large OJ, $.95, decaf, $1.05. Took a chocolate-chip cookie to top off the tank for the ride home, $.95.

Just a few weeks ago the special was just $2.65. Prices are going through the roof!

Actually a new Ford gets around 65mpg. Of course its only European based because its a diesel engine.

You never "break even", you just have more cycling stuff.

With apologies to Greg LeMond.

yeah; I was hoping for donuts

Bring it to the US, and I'll be all over it. For a while I figured if I were forced to buying a new car it'd be something like a VW Golf TDI. But A) I found out that VW's QC is pretty miserable these days and they have an above average failure rate, and anyway B) they stopped importing diesel cars about that time.

Anyway, when I'm only putting about 4000 miles a year on my car, and it gets 26 MPG (Ford Taurus) or 24 MPG (if I'm driving the Windstar) there's not really all that much incentive for me to buy a different new car to sit in the driveway all day depreciating.

Yeah its a shame we cannot get some of those great high efficiency diesel vehicles. They used to be horrible polluters compared to regular petrol but now they are much cleaner and can run on so little fuel.

I don't think gas needs to get more expensive, I think that US public transportation needs to be improved. Trains are finally starting to run more commuters and lay more rail, but in certain cities, you get horrible public transportation. Take Indy for instance. When I was going to school at Butler, they had a train running from Broad Ripple, through Butler, and then downtown. Then, my sophomore year, they cut out five bus routes including that one. So, you'd either have to walk (or bike) at least 2 miles to a bus stop. Now, that's not going to hurt someone like me very much, just be a slight inconvenience. Who it's really going to hurt are the handicapped or elderly that cannot or should not be walking that far in rain and snow.

that's not including people in my situation now - I live in a small town, 10 miles away from school, 7 miles away from the nearest Wal Mart (which, incidentally, is just about the only store in town, except for two Krogers), and 30 miles away from a town with any retail whatsoever. There's no way that I could survive without a car comfortably, and I didn't go to 4 years of college and land one of the highest paying teaching jobs in the state to be uncomfortable.

Not to mention the people (salesmen come to mind immediately) who travel for business, or the businesses (and it's mostly all of them) who require trucking to move their products. At 8mpg highway, semis would really feel the hit with incredibly raise gas prices, and for the most part, they AREN'T subsidized, meaning that all that gas money comes out of the pockets of the truckers.

Unless you improve public transportation, you can't raise gas prices.


Besides, wasn't it Algore that said that he wants to artificially raise gas prices to $5 a gallon? Seems like he's going there.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for decreased car usage - if I lived in a city, the only car I'd have would be my race car...

"Gas prices aren't high enough." "The government subsidizes the price of fuel?" Are you kidding me? Where are you hearing this nonsense. The last I checked oil was traded in the future markets and wholesale prices are driven by, thank God, a market-driven economy, i.e. supply and demand.
Have any of you people checked the news lately? Our economy is in a huge tailspin, partly due to the high cost of gasoline. Everything, even your precious bicycles, is affected by the higher cost of fuel. Have you checked the unemployment rates lately? Haven't you heard that the higher cost of fuel has been directly linked to layoffs and stifled growth? Whether you want to admit it or not the entire world economy, especially ours, is driven by oil/energy. When energy costs go up so does EVERYTHING else. If the cost goes too high, like it did a month or so ago, you start to see fewer dollars in the economy as these extra dollars are going for energy costs. Ultimately, as consumers spend less, the economy slows down and people lose jobs.

Don't get me wrong I am all for saving and conserving energy but let's not get carried away. I am all for working towards reducing our country's dependence on oil and at the same time working towards a cleaner energy source, but mandating or regulating the price of gasoline is not the way to do it.

Thanks for letting me rant.

+1 ... that's what I thought too ...

My refill this morning was a bowl of Raisin Bran ($0.50) half a protein bar ($1.50) and I put a scoop of gatorade crystals in the reserve tank ($0.10) along with a carb-gel ($2.00)... $4.10 to go 62 km.

My Grand Caravan (I need that hog because it's wheelchair accessible for my son) would cost $12.30 for that trip (not to mention insurance and maint. costs... oh wait, I sorta did just mention those. Oh well.)

Too much bike fuel first thing in the morning gives me gas!

Power Bar Peanut Butter or Apple Cinnamon, Cliff Bar Peanut Chocolate Chip. Tiger Protein Bar, Gala Apples, Scrambled Eggs with Turkey and cheese, Glass of OJ or glass of water. (not all at once) I will have a combination of the above for breakfast before heading out to work or on long rides.

(I just don't drive)