giving up vacation time to accumulate more "commuter miles"? WTF**********???

i'm utterly incapable of even beginning to understand such an OCD mindset.

just ride your bike. a mile ridden is a mile ridden. the rest is meaningless fluff.

The way that it was explained to me when I started participating in the Commuting Mileage threads was that anything you rode on your way to or from work (or school, if not yet working) counted. Mid-day errands and after-work club rides counted, so long as you were not yet home from your morning ride out.

I do agree it would be kind of a linguistic stretch to say that you "commuted" to the library or grocery store if you don't work there. Does the "Utility Cycling" subforum have a thread for tracking that stuff?

+1,000,000

So it is about keeping score, or enjoying the rides?

Even if it is about keeping score, how can anything we say, or the OP now decides to game the system fool the man in the mirror?

What we have here is someone coming to a forum saying "help me change my mind about the scoring system I set up for myself, because I'm coming up a bit short. Is it worthy in any way of debate?

Or, going back to the beginning, is it about the commute, or the score?

No one but you cares how many miles you ride or how you count them. There is no prize at the end of the year. If you want to count rides doing errands as commuting, go ahead. If you want to include miles you rode while asleep, dreaming about riding your bike, fine.

I'm a little less OCD than the OP.

I prefer to have a working odometer on each of my bikes, but I don't separate miles between, commuting, utility, trail, leisure & family. They're all cycling miles to me.

But I agree with the early posters in this thread that stated that this is YOUR goal so YOU make the rules on what counts and what doesn't.

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.

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!