Fuel Consumption

     During the last few weeks of my first year at Case I thought how nice it would be to have a bike on campus.  I probably wouldn't use it to travel from class to class (like the majority of students do; I think it's more of a hassle than convenience though) but rather to explore more of Cleveland.  Only after taking a field trip around the city did I realize the immense size of the city, and how my access to most of it is blocked due to only having access to public transportation and walking.  It's not realistic to be taking 10-mile day trips on foot while public transportation...is public transportation.  I really don't mind using it except when I have my camera bag on me.  I totally feel vulnerable.  So a bike would be superb to have.
    This past week (when it hasn't been raining) I've started riding my bike again.  Riding around has been a really nice way to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather.  Also, I realized what a speedy mode of transportation it is.  I timed myself today and was able to get from my house to downtown in about 10 minutes, and it took me about another 15 to get to Woodmont from there.
    I think an additional goal I'll have for this summer will be to bike around as much as I can.  I don't mind riding in traffic (I did a lot of that today), and I think my only problem might be what will happen when it gets dark.  Riding around at night is definitely not the safest thing to do, so I'll have to come up with a way to solve that. Lights are a possibility, but I'll see.
    Also, since I'll be using a bike more, I want to see how that effects my gasoline usage for my car.  Luckily, I discovered a neat Twitter bot today called FuelFrog.  Every time you fill up your car with gas you message the bot with information like how much gas you bought, how much it cost, and how much you drove since your last fill-up.  It then stores that data and produces a bunch of neat statistics and graphs for you online.  Hopefully switching from driving to biking everywhere I'll see a difference in my gas consumption (I have a past record written on paper, but this is a more efficient way of collecting this data).