Bicycling wastes gas?

[NeilBlanchard]

The OP has to be mistaken -- a person on a bicycle is the most efficient way to travel, period. Efficiency means it uses less energy than any other way of traveling.

If you drive a car (or ride a small motorcycle) -- you still eat a meal that is nearly the same as the one you would eat if you biked. The difference needs to be balanced against the well-to-wheel energy of the vehicle. Including the REAL costs of exploration, producing, transport, refining, transport again, and then the piss-poor efficiencies of an ICE powered car!

If you eat locally produced food, then you will save a lot of energy input. An average food item travels something like 1,500 miles TO GET TO YOU!

Food (organically produced) is ALL short cycled carbon -- the plants pull carbon dioxide from the air, etc. -- and when you eat it, the carbon returns to the air. There is a zero sum gain of carbon.

Oil on the other hand is millions of years old! A single gallon of gasoline represents ~92 TONS of biological material, that had to be "cooked" for millions of years, and concentrated, by heat and pressure into petroleum -- and you know the rest...

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Lazarus

how far can we go on $2.66 with a bike figuring 10 mph @ 528 calories an hour.

94.1 miles - rice (white or brown)

I think that either the math is off a bit, or you shop at expensive places. Looking around the web, I figure that uncooked brown rice has about 331 calories per 100 grams, or about 1650 c/lb. I can buy brown rice at about $0.40 per pound, so get 6.65 lbs for $2.66, which is about 11,000 calories. At 528 calories per 10 miles, it'll take me a bit over 200 miles - over twice the given distance.

Also, I have to wonder if that 528 calories is total calories burned, or the increase over what's used driving.

Later: OK, I got curious. The calculator here http://www.prohealth.com/weightloss/...culator2_2.cfm gives 544 cal/hr burn for biking at 10-12 mph (for me at 200 lbs). The closest thing I saw to driving was fishing while sitting in a boat, at 228 cal/hr. So when biking, I'm burning only 316 additional calories per hour, and I can do about 350 miles on that pound of brown rice.

[Piwoslaw]

(1) But driving isn't just sitting behind the wheel, it's analyzing the situation, talking on a cell phone, etc. That all takes energy. So the figure should be higher than for sitting in a boat.

(2) The figures for X calories per serving of some food: Is that X calories total, or X calories that the body can actually use. The undigested remains that leave the body as waste also have positive energy content, say Y calories, so maybe the useable calorie content of that serving is really X-Y?

[Christ]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

(1) But driving isn't just sitting behind the wheel, it's analyzing the situation, talking on a cell phone, etc. That all takes energy. So the figure should be higher than for sitting in a boat.

(2) The figures for X calories per serving of some food: Is that X calories total, or X calories that the body can actually use. The undigested remains that leave the body as waste also have positive energy content, say Y calories, so maybe the useable calorie content of that serving is really X-Y?

I think that's a really crappy suggestion... :P

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Christ

I think that's a really crappy suggestion... :P

I hope that comment left a bad taste in your mouth

[Christ]

Good sport, that one...

[MadisonMPG]

lol ^^^

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

(1) But driving isn't just sitting behind the wheel, it's analyzing the situation, talking on a cell phone, etc. That all takes energy. So the figure should be higher than for sitting in a boat.

But fishing from a boat isn't just sitting there, it's casting the line, occasionally (unless you're me) reeling in a fish, etc. Plus, of course, some of that "analyzing the situation" - though surprisingly enough, thinking does not take significantly more energy than not thinking.

I don't claim it's a perfect analogue, nor are any of my numbers better than what I could find in a quick search. (Even then, I had to go through a lot of sites giving calories per cup of cooked rice to find a figure for uncooked.) It's just a ballpark calculation to see if the numbers in the original post were reasonable.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I don't claim it's a perfect analogue, nor are any of my numbers better than what I could find in a quick search. (Even then, I had to go through a lot of sites giving calories per cup of cooked rice to find a figure for uncooked.) It's just a ballpark calculation to see if the numbers in the original post were reasonable.

I have an idea of how hard it was to find any real info, so thanks for that
And I know the figure are approximations, but I'm just knit-picking and getting all anal about details. I love getting lost in the little things

[Christ]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

But fishing from a boat isn't just sitting there, it's casting the line, occasionally (unless you're me) reeling in a fish, etc. Plus, of course, some of that "analyzing the situation" - though surprisingly enough, thinking does not take significantly more energy than not thinking.

I don't claim it's a perfect analogue, nor are any of my numbers better than what I could find in a quick search. (Even then, I had to go through a lot of sites giving calories per cup of cooked rice to find a figure for uncooked.) It's just a ballpark calculation to see if the numbers in the original post were reasonable.

Don't forget the arm-chair exercise of lifting beer to face.

Ironically, beer probably contains more proteins and calories than some of those fish you're trying to catch, depending on how many beers you've had while catching (or not) one. Oh, and it doesn't have mercury in it.