Burton

LOL Really? On the other hand - park a $2000 car someplace and when you come back you still have a $2000 car. Park a $2000 bike someplace and when you come back all you have is the key in your pocket!

I` taking a break from all these concerns about my juice intake and going to work. I have a couple bikes still bugging me to buy them expensive excessories.

Something I noticed about aging: Some people lose their looks; some people lose their hair - most people lose their sense of humor. Good thing I didn`t post my ice-cream intake!

DataJunkie

..and others are overly sensitive.

njkayaker

???
You are complaining that it is expensive. Other people are saying it is unnecessary.

No one suggested that you drink Gaterade (people drink too much of that too).

Juice, soda, and Gaterade (any "sports" drinks) all have the same problem: they are all mostly sugar. Nutritionally, they are not significantly different. The calories in all that juice you are drinking come from sugar!

If you really are interested in "vitamins", eat whole fruit and drink water.

I rarely buy water. It's generally a serious waste of money.

njkayaker

We see that you have lost your humor!

bluefoxicy

Which part?

prathmann

Not ridiculous at all. When I use my bicycle for my transportation needs my gas bill goes down but my grocery bill goes up. I don't count the cost of the amount of food needed to maintain a relatively sedentary lifestyle, just the extra amount that I have to eat as a result of the biking.

For me that's about 30 kcal/mile but will vary depending on your speed, terrain, and weight. OTOH, my car needs about 1000 kcal/mile due to its greater speed and weight. But the cost of equivalent energy is much cheaper when buying hydrocarbons at the gas station vs. buying carbohydrates at the grocery store. The 30 kcal cost me about $0.06 for food vs. the 1000 kcal costing about $0.12 for gas. So fuel costs are about half as much for my bike. When I add in costs for tires, maintenance, insurance, registration/smog checks and depreciation the bike is still cheaper, but only by about a third.

DataJunkie

Logical fallacy.

dougmc

Something is incredibly wrong with this statement. Either you're mistreating your car tires in some incredible way ... or you're just plain wrong. Or you buy some special show tires?

Car tires will last a decade if you don't drive much. Even if your car is stored outside in Texas.

chipcom 

uh...no. Just because a bike cost or is worth 2k doesn't mean that the mutts who would steal them realize that...unless your bike has a lot of obvious bling.

as for your OP:

1. water/iced tea/lemonade/etc are cheap and easy to make
2. you don't need special clothes to ride a bike
3. you don't need $50ea tires to have them last 2-5k miles

So basically if cycling is expensive, it's because you made the choice to make it so...not that there is anything wrong with that.

dougmc

Just for the record, I doubted his figures here, so I did the math ... and it all checks out.

1000 kcal/mile and 30 kcal/mile are about right.

A whopper junior has 370 kcal and costs $1. That works out to about $0.08/mile. Buying food and cooking it yourself will make it even cheaper.

But of course, the real cost of operating a car isn't the fuel -- it's everything else. A $20,000 car that lasts ten years is $2000/year right there. Add in $500/year maintenance, $400/year insurance, $100/year registration ... it adds up fast. If that car gets 30 mpg, gas costs $3.50/gallon and you drive 15k miles/year, that's only $1750/year in gas.

bluefoxicy

Appeal to Nature. That something is natural means it is good, or better, or that deviation from it is inherently wrong.

Similar are the Appeal to Novelty (that something is new means it is better) and Appeal to Tradition (that something was done this way before makes it better).

What makes you think that mankind naturally evolved to bypass his endurance limits by hacking his body in such ways as artificially injecting nutrients into it? Juices and sports drinks are made so you can wind out beyond what your body's supposed to handle and then inject pure sugar and salts in an aqueous solution right into the system by dumping them, absorption-ready, into your stomach. No need to digest anything, just suck this straight through.

The natural path would involve simply easing back when you reach your limits. We're talking about people who are either trying to become more comfortable within their limits or trying to bypass their limits artificially. Consumption of fruit is irrelevant here; and as "natural" as it is in comparison to fruit juice or sports drink, your body isn't designed to intake fruit in that manner for that purpose.

In other words, eating fruit is "more natural" than drinking gatorade; and it's also not as good for the purpose.

bluefoxicy

What car insurance company are you using? I was paying $600/6mo before I ever had an accident (at 21!) on an old beater car worth nothing, just for liability and with multiple discounts due to a good track record and additional study on defensive driving. Recently I paid $345/mo with All-State after dozens of discounts (All-State is a scam, we all know they're 50% higher on average than anyone else); and now I pay $235/mo with Keystone through AAA. Full coverage on a 2004 Mazda 3 with 58000 miles.

I had one bad year 4 or 5 years ago where I had 2 at-fault accidents that got me booted. I wound up with a $1400/6mo policy ($230/mo), and then a few years later I got a new(!) car (I wanted used... parents wouldn't cosign), and it jumped to about $500/mo(!) for a $15000 car. Switched to All-State, ditched that car for a 2004, I came down to about $280/mo ... and then my policy just slowly crept up, more and more expensive as time passed.

All-State kept giving me new discounts, and jacking up the price in spite of this. No more collisions, no more claims, no points on my license, nothing. Clean insurance history. I passed 25, I got a 'discount' that cost me $50/mo more. Parents said that reaching 25 without a wife is a sure indicator that I'm a high-risk driver and my insurance goes way up, or something stupid. Also All-State tried to tell me that my Mazda 3 is a sports car (so was my Cobalt, as it got 155HP; anything over 120HP qualifies as a sports car, apparently).

I think insurance companies collude. Switching drops you several notches; All-State has tried to get me back repeatedly and gone, "Oh, damn, we can't match their rate!" but now an agent is personally mucking with my file to get me under their rate. I had a friend ages ago that would get a quote from Geico, take it to his agent, and his agent would beat it by $10/mo, every time... did this every 6 months, ratcheted his insurance down without switching.

I want a motorcycle because usually whatever I use the car for is easily bypassed. Bike is too slow sometimes, I can't go all over the place in 2 hours, it takes 8 ... motorcycle. I'm hauling something that fits in a backpack, or nothing at all. I have a 10 mile trip, or I'm going 10 miles out and shopping around and coming back ... bicycle. Bike commute is neglegible, I'd save 20 minutes by car or motorcycle. Saturday I am trying the MTA again, 11 miles out, plus 3 more to go get some meat, plus come back 15 miles from way out there... I'm thinking, if I had a motorcycle ... nah, still ridiculous, this is fine on a bike. All riding around the city, bicycle... commute to work, bicycle. DC, just me? Motorcycle.

Take the miles off the car, drop my premium. I'll get liability on the motorcycle; I have uninsured motorist coverage and medical. Full coverage on the motorcycle? Why? It's a $1500 used ($4000 new) machine, forget that, I can buy one if I wreck it. I pay full coverage on a car to manage the $20,000 I need to shell out to pay the loan off and get another car (actually the car's value is $10k now and the loan is $13k, I got gap insurance, and I'm SOL for a down payment on a new car); risk is way too high. Risk on a motorcycle? Pff. Risk is to me or to hitting someone else; the bike is a negligible toy, I can buy a new one just as easily as buying a new bicycle.

I want the car to last longer, and I want to drop its usage so I can lower my payments. Once I get my loan paid off I might drop full coverage, too ... I'm not totaling my own car, and if another party is at-fault for destroying my vehicle then their liability covers it. Besides, I can get around on a bicycle and motorcycle just fine.

DataJunkie

Your train has derailed.

njkayaker

Huh? What are you talking about?

The OP is drinking 3 liters of juice for a 15-30km daily ride!

dougmc

USAA.

Now that I look it up, I was thinking the six month figure was a yearly figure. I'm paying $755/year for my car (and an almost identical amount for my wife's.) But that is full coverage, with limits that are much higher than the state mandated minimums. Sorry about the confusion.

prathmann

Yes, we all have different figures to plug in when evaluating the relative costs. I thought doug's numbers were on the high side since in my case the car cost $9000 when bought new in '87 ($375/yr so far), maintenance has been under $100/yr, and insurance runs $250/yr (State Farm liab. only).

contango 

Don't assume you won't total it. The couple who lived next door to me a few years back dropped full coverage on their car insurance to save some money and within a week they rolled it on ice and totalled it.

Burton

Actually the OP is biking 15 to 30 km / dat to and from work, working a 12 hour day and drinking 3 liters of unsweetened fruit juice per day. Mango is the first choice. If I was at home I could cut the stuff up and run it through a blender and arive at about the same point.

I`m not sure where all the concerns about sugar are based on - your body breaks almost everything down to sugars to burn anyway and fructose is the easiest to deal with. By definition `sugar` is simply a crystaline form of carbohydrates.

And for anyone that still concerned - I weigh 155lbs, have a low body fat index and not even any remote signs of diabetes. In fact diabetes is more common in overweight people, middleaged people, individuals that exercise little, and for some reason - most common among blacks and hispanics.

But Montreal has a high humidity index and currently temperatures in the 30s and I need to drink a lot of fluids. The water in the area I work sucks.

Burton

Aw come on! Do you actually think people steal bikes indescriminately? Cheap bikes are fair game if they`re not locked up - but expensive bikes and expensive cars attract thieves like a magnet - locked or not!

The last part of your post is bang on! What I spend is my choice and if its at times a little outrageous - itls probably a good indication that I`m having a good time. Life should be fun!

njkayaker

You need to be a bit more clear in what you write. Is it 15-30 km per day (round trip) or one way?

If it's per day, it's not that much cycling. You really should not need an extra 1400 cals per day to support that.

No one has any idea what you do for work (so the relevance of a "12 hour day" is not at all clear). "Unsweetened" is meaningless because the calories in fruit juice is nearly all sugar. What matters is how much sugar or calories you are consuming.

We have no idea what else you are eating. If you are eating the average amount of calories otherwise (2000 cals per day is considered "average"), you are consuming something-line an additional 1400 cals in fruit juice alone!

You need to learn more about basic nutrition and metabolism. The current general concern about consuming large quantities of simple sugars is that they convert too quickly into glucose (blood concentration) and fructose (conversion by the liver into fat).

Fruit juice is really no different than soda or "sports" drinks in terms of metabolism. That is, fruit juice isn't really any more healthy than any other sugary drink (that is, fruit juice has the same problems that other sugary drinks have).

Eating the whole fruit is generally healthier because you are getting other stuff (like fiber) that slow digestion and are consuming sugar at a much lower rate.

No one is exactly "concerned". You are free to do whatever you want. Though, that you choose to do something doesn't mean it makes any sense.

You were complaining that fruit juice is expensive. Since it isn't necessary to drink fruit juice, the expense is voluntary. That is, if it's "too expensive", then stop spending money on it. If you don't want to do that, then it isn't "too expensive" (since it's something you choose to do!).

Montreal seems mild compared to NJ! What you need is to drink water. What you are choosing to do is to get that water from your food (fruit juice is food).

kengrubb

There is a great documentary called "The Power Of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil"

https://www.powerofcommunity.org

A switch from cars to bicycles was one part of the solution.

Snowman219

Don't pedal so fast sheesh! Sip on the energy just like your car does! : O Massive revelation!

Burton

It depends on the day because I work at different locations on different days.

If it took me all day to do 15 to 30 km I might agree with you - I think you"re overanalyzing this whole thing.

I work in a few different bike shops so physical labor. You might want to read the labels on some of those sweetened and unsweetened drinks yourself. The calorie content is much higher per ml when sugar is added.

Think you're kidding yourself. Running fresh fruit through a blender results in juice. Adding that to milk or water results in a drink. How that's less healthy than fresh fruit escapes me. Iced drinks made like that are popular in many countries in the world. Not everything everywhere in the world is as processed as it is in north american supermarkets.


That's a lot of comments for someone who"d "unconcerned" If I was that unconcerned I would have just skipped over it myself.

Yup - and I need a calorie intake as well as hydration. And water isn't enough - that's exactly why there are hydration drinks on the market. And since they're also incomplete - companies are now marketing vitamin water. I don't have an issue with my choice. It combines water, vitamins, minerals, salts and some fibre. But thanks for the input anyway.

beebe

Appeal to nature is not a fallacy. It is a type of argument. The individual arguments are sometimes fallacious (fallacy of relevance). Even ignoring that, I don't think that he did anything more than making a vague implication that being more natural makes whole fruit better than juice.

The above statement:
I don't like fruit with added sugar (or I think added sugar is bad)
Whole fruit doesn't contain added sugar
Therefore I would rather eat whole fruit

Appeal to nature:
Whole fruit is more natural
Natural things are better
Therefore whole fruit is better (or I would rather eat whole fruit because it is better)

See the difference?

Furthermore: OP is being whiny. Flavor is a choice, and a luxury. If you need extra calories, they can be found more cheaply. Drink simply syrup and stop complaining about how the grass is greener on the other side. If you want to stick with juice, quit complaining that you have to pay for something that you want, not that you need.

wahoonc

Companies are marketing sports drinks and vitamin water to make money...period. If you eat a balanced diet with enough fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as drink enough water you don't normally need supplements of any sort. Anything else is marketing hype.

Aaron