A Beautiful Day to Ride a Motorcycle to Work!

Today was "National Motorcycle to Work Day" so I decided to join in.  The motorcycle is just one of the alternative modes of transportation I take to work. My favorite modes are, in order of frequency, bicycling, driving, and carpooling to Metro. Motorcycing allows you to save gas, get to work faster (usually), and ride in the HOV lanes. It cuts my drive alone commute by 15-20 minutes.

The weather this morning was a perfect 70 degrees and no rain was forecast.  It was a beautiful, cool, easy commute using Rt. 29 in Fairfax County for the first half to avoid slow downs on I-66 and then the rest in the HOV lanes on 66 from Nutley St to the Lee Hwy exit in Arlington.  Traffic as usual on 66 at Nutley was thick and crawled along at about 10 MPH, but after a mile and a half to the Beltway exits, the road was clear sailing to Lee Hwy at Lyon Village in Arlington. I was getting 77 mpg on my Honda Nighthawk 250.

I recently purchased the 2002 Honda as insurance against higher gas prices for $1700.00.  I figured that I might be able to recoup the cost by the end of the riding season this year, since at 77 miles per gallon it eclipses any other vehicle that can run 70 MPH that is necessary to keep up with traffic on 66. It goes 47 miles further per gallon than the car (30 mpg). My commute is about 50 miles round trip; less than a gallon is used.

I was a little leery of buying the small machine as in the past 30 years I had ridden much larger, higher horsepower machines. I was really looking for a good used 500cc machine, but after a test ride I was surprised at the performance of the 250. After some research I found out that the bike was capable of getting as much as 80 mpg and can go 80mph.  It is the bike that the Motorcycle Safety courses use to teach new riders. It is a delight to ride, easy to maneuver, plenty fast enough to keep up with traffic, and just plain fun. It turns out there is a cult following on the web for the bike with a group on Yahoo that is active. People even take fairly extensive trips on the little gas savers.

John Durham
TDM Planner