A little taste ...

... of what I'm missing, by using a bicycle for my daily transportation.

I probably spent more than you did on Black Friday. I upgraded the Missus' transportation.

Her 2000 Honda minivan was getting pretty long in the tooth, at 134,000 miles. We bought it brand-new, and it's been a good vehicle... and it still runs fine, but the nickel-and-dime problems were starting to crop up. (You know, the stuff that costs $100-500 to get fixed.) We traded it for a 2009 Honda minivan with about 100,000 fewer miles. $16,500. (For comparison purposes, the old one was about $23k brand-new, and a brand-new 2012 is well over $35k. OUCH!!)

I'll be paying about $300/month for the next 4 years to the bank.

Sales tax was $800-plus.

Insurance is about $70 per year more than before. (Not as bad as I'd anticipated.)

License and registration - $91.

Hopefully she'll drive many, many miles before I need to buy her new tires, or do repairs other than routine maintenance. And I'm slightly insulated from the cost of gas, since I give her money on payday, and am rarely there on the fill-up days.

If we had a second car, most of those expenses would be roughly doubled. "Mamma mia!" as they say in the Olde Countrie.

My #2 reason for bike transportation has been powerfully reinforced in my mind. (I should have more respect for those motorists - they pay a LOT of money to drive around in their little runabouts!)