Exactly. Can't see myself giving the little vacation time I have. I spend half of my wake time at work!


However, if the OP has some serious issues, if reaching this commuting miles goal is a way of motivating himself to overcome those (whatever that might be - health, self discipline, you name it) - then, by all means go for it. If it's of any help, I'm all for letting him count vacation miles as a commute, changing the mileage thread rules in this one case. :)

Taken in the way you intended. :notamused:

D'oh! I've been counting all my car-replacement riding in the commuting thread. I guess next year I'll only post to-work-and-back miles.

I knew this would be entertaining - I've purposely not responded just to see the range of reactions. I've decided to use jyl's calculations in which case I've commuted about 10,000 miles (kidding).

My question was the accepted definition of commuting and consensus seems clear - riding to and from work including side trips. While I'm essentially car free, commuting miles are not going to the grocery store or other rides.

Fwiw, I get plenty of vacation time, that's why I have leftover at the end of the year and will still carry over more than I'll use next year. Some day I'll take a sabbatical... maybe! The goal is not set in stone, but a big deal for me - 4,000 commuting miles is more than double my usual year. Thanks for all the feedback... sorta!

seriously.

this forum needs an ignore list function.

I meant that people in the US don't use their vacation.

it has one.

i have a few people on it, but the rotation changes.

Yeah, sure you did.

I think you need to chill out.

Are you having a bad day or something?

Supertramp!

Why even count miles?

To borrow a phrase from another poster, "way to suck the fun out."

38F ,18 mile commute in the rain is double miles, as is any commute under 28F. Fixed it for ya.

Everyday is a vacation day for me; enjoy your days at work.

In an hour or two I might ride to the swimming pool, or I may not. Don't know the mileage as I haven't ever measured, timed or logged it. Let the OCD types get your jollies doing so.

Can you ride in on a non-work-day and take in a pannier load of stuff you need for work, or for your physical office? Do it on a Saturday or Sunday perhaps? That way, you are commuting from home to work, accomplishing something that involves your job, but not giving up a vacation day to actually report for work for the whole day. Plus maybe you can take in something from home that you wished you had at the office. Just a thought.

Goals serve different functions for different people, and I respect that you take yours seriously. Happy riding!

I do that sometimes! I generally do a token amount of work while there so that I can count it as a commute. ;)

King Solomon says: Let the left leg stroke count as leisure riding and the right leg stroke count as commuting or utility cycling.

I don't get it. Am I too old, from a different planet (generation), too jaded, or burnt out? Because I just can't understand why anybody cares about tracking bike commute miles or days. In all fairness, I don't have any mileage recording gadgets on the bike, and if/when asked estimate my time/distance based on my typical riding patterns or knowing the rough distance of various rides.

I commute by bike because it suits my needs and preferences, not to prove anything to myself or anybody else. If there's anything Im proud of it isn't how far or often I ride, but how little I drive (surrendered my plates 4 years ago) and that I can get by without needing a car except for things like going to the airport, despite living in a car dominated suburb of NYC.

Then again, it might be that after riding enough miles and/or years I just stopped counting.

FBinNY, I feel the same way, as you can see from my smart-alec response above. But I have a personal reason to start tracking it. I have a vague sense I have gotten stronger in recent years, I want more of a vague sense. My parents' generation is dying or aging rapidly. I see how my relatives who take care of themselves fare better than those who don't. More about that in my blog, linked below.

I'm like you. With a father who died of a heart condition, and a brother who needed angioplasty at 45 years or so, I consider health a nice benefit of riding. Miles don't matter, not needing any medical treatment, drugs or whatever at my age is proof enough.

Overall I have only one health related problem. At my age, people are often talking about this or that doctor, hospital, or drug therapy & I'm totally frozen out of the conversation.

I get a kick out of many of these "debates" as a lot of them are based on personalities rather than any right or wrong answer. I usually avoid them and go biking instead.

I keep track of miles and commutes, and set my personal goals based on them. It works for me, but then I probably come by it naturally as both sides of the family like numbers. One grandfather measured the circumference of the trees in his yard every year and wrote them down. My father records miles, I record miles, my daughter records miles, my son doesn't.

I can relate to the "frozen out of conversation" problem. There's so much heart disease and stroke history on both sides of my family. One uncle had a quadruple bypass at age 46 and another many years later. Two more uncles have had them. My father saw that early on and started biking and at age 79 is planning on our weekly 400 mile ride in August. We don't "get" to join in on the others' conversations at reunions. We go biking instead. And both faithfully record the miles. :-)

As to what constitutes commuting miles, "whatever trips your trigger." I'd personally never consider giving up vacation days, but that's just me. Go for it if you'll sleep better!

The thing is, if you set a lofty goal for yourself and you meet it, then what? Raise it for next year? Where does it all end? At some point, you become a slave to your self-imposed goals. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to fall a bit short. It'll be a reminder that these types of goals are ultimately meaningless. If anything, you can be a little proud for having the sense to not let them get in the way of your real life. :)

You could call it slave, but think of statistics worship as another form of stamp collection. It's harmless, and if it gives the person some kind of joy, why begrudge him (or me)?

as someone else said, i think it just comes down to different personality types.

i ride my bike. A LOT. i haven't owned a car in 14 years. my bikes are my car. none of my bikes have speedometers, odometers or ometers of any kind. i don't ride for sport or recreation; i ride simply to get myself around town, so such numbers are meaningless to me.

i have a relative who's a big-time recreational cyclist. she's always setting lofty mileage goals for all of her recreational riding, but will still hop in her car to drive over to the supermarket to pick up a loaf of bread.

we both dearly love cycling in our own ways, but our mindsets in how we approach the activity could not be more dissimilar. when i see her at family functions, she'll say things like "i'm right on target to hit 8,500 miles this year, where are you at right now?" to which i can only reply "uh, i don't really know, maybe several thousand? as you know, i don't really keep track of that stuff". for her, cycling is a very goal-oriented activity in which she's constantly chasing a number. for me, i couldn't care less about the numbers, i just ride my bike cuz it's the easiest way to get around town and because it's so damn fun!

neither perspective is wrong, but i do have a hard time understanding the obsession with number chasing because my brain just works so very differently. it's hard for me to understand how something so ultimately meaningless could matter so much to some people, but it apparently does, and as long as they ain't hurting anyone in the process, no harm/no foul. besides, there's probably a lot of things that i care about that others would look at and say "how can you care about that stuff? it's meaningless".

LOL, that means on those weekend recreational rides when I've stopped at my (closed) workplace to fill my water bottles, I can count those as commuting distances (and rides too I guess).

Because I ride (commuting, utility and recreational) for fitness, I am more interested in total distance than commuting distance although I log them separately in MapMyRide.com. For commuting purposes, I am more interested in the human-powered commuting days (bike or walk) than distance.

However, I have a similar dilemma in that once a year, our Green Team asks us to participate in a green commuting challenge in which we try to take a green commuting method and log the type of commuting method used to determine the amount of carbon saved (human-powered saves the most whereas car-pooling or transit saves less). The shortest route to work is 8km RT whereas I generally bike 32-46km so I actually burn more carbon than I need to. The online-log asks us our commuting distance and the method of commuting to determine the carbon saved. To be fair, I should record 8km but my Green Team leader wants us to win the challenge over other departments so I'm asked to put in the actual distance I ride because it produces a bigger "carbon saved" number compared with driving a car alone for those distances.

It's probably just OCD on my part. Fun to keep track of things. Perhaps in time I'll lose interest, too. :)

That's not so bad. Princeton University was once caught buying old newspapers so it could increase its statistics of how much paper they recycled!

Why do some cyclists have a bunch of bikes and some just one? Why do some have brand new carbon monoxide and unobtanium bikes and some old ratty steel? Why ask why? Why do I count miles and some others don't. Because... so there... who cares what others do? One of my favorite expressions, "what other people think of me is none of my business." emoticon with tongue sticking out

FWIW, I know a few riders who care about hours and kilojoules rather than miles.

But... my commute isn't replacing the car. If I drive it's replacing the bike.

Stop worrying. Do what the group wants you to do. It's no skin off anyone's nose.