Mileage count: Week 1

It's the end of the first week of my experiment to publicly share my mileage. All added up, I drove a grand total of 363 miles. Now that you're done gasping and can read again, here's how it breaks down:

• Monday (my day off): I rode my bike to the gym instead of driving. This is something I should do on a regular basis since it's a whoppin' 1.5 miles away. I drove 16 miles to drop some stuff off at Goodwill and go to the nearby Target. I ended the day getting a ride to my softball game.

• Tuesday: Drove to and from work for a total of 64 miles.

• Wednesday: Another 64-mile commute.
  

• Thursday: At the end of a 13-hour work day, the 110 ramp is closed so I take a detour, adding an extra two miles and a lot of internal cursing at L.A. (My co-worker's guess the next day was that it was closed for filming, which made me even more annoyed.) Total=66 miles.

• Friday: I add an extra 20 miles to my commute to drive to a school to work with a student. Total=82 miles.
  

• Saturday: 66 miles driving to work (I discover that my all-freeway route on Saturdays is slightly longer), then five miles round-trip to meet friends for dinner. I considered biking but I was already running late. Total=71 miles.
  

•  To end the week, I had a no-car Sunday. Since I've taken public transportation to work and liked it, I decided to take the bus to Home Depot. When I'm in my car doing errands I don't think twice about adding another destination or driving to the nice mall over the one that's closest (as I did on New Year's Day, Christmas gift cards in hand). But when you're leaving your car behind, running errands becomes simpler and more streamlined, but not faster so you have to have extra time on your hands. But it did help in my environmental goal of not over-consuming since I couldn't impulse buy and throw whatever I bought in the car.

The Home Depot is three miles away but easy to get to by bus since it's just a straight shot up Cherry. So I walked 15 minutes from my apartment to Cherry, waited about eight minutes for the bus, then rode on the bus for 10 minutes. I got my paint samples and headed out. On the way back the bus came as soon as I arrived at the bus stop. And getting off at 4th Street, I browsed in some antique stores on Retro Row on my walk home with the sun shining (hint, I was enjoying myself). The extra time it took wasn't a big deal but I think that's partly because of the novelty of it all. I'm not sure how often I could do this, or if I could extend it to a whole weekend.

For the rest of the day, I went running with two friends, walked to the grocery store just around the corner from my house and resisted the urge to drive to Target to return some things I'd bought earlier in the week.