Anchorage Daily News

Depending on what calculation you go by, I'm getting somewhere between 400 and 700 miles per gallon on the commute to work these days.

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At a cost of $4 a gallon of gasoline, this would figure out to about a penny per mile. If you believe optimistic new mileage figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that's about the cost the average American driver would pay for gasoline if the price per gallon dropped to 27 cents.

If you're skeptical about NHTSA's new claim of an average of 26.8 mpg -- and who wouldn't be in a state where 18 mpg sport-utility vehicles so obviously and overwhelmingly out number 40 mpg economy cars? -- my per-mile economics only get better.

Of course, these savings do require some effort. The vehicle that most often takes me to town now is powered by muscle and fueled by salmon and rice, or pasta, or duck tacos. This commuting vehicle of choice is a bicycle, and it demands more effort and more skill than sitting on your butt while occasionally moving the right foot and the left hand.

But the exercise, more than the cost savings, is why I got on the bike in the first place. Cost savings are simply turning out to be a bonus.

Yes, the move away from a gas-guzzling vehicle to an environmentally friendly one has some drawbacks. Even on go-fast days, a hard ride on the shortest route still takes about 35 minutes -- about 10 minutes more than by car, depending on traffic.

On easy days, depending on distractions along the way, the ride can sometimes take an hour or more. These are sometimes the days when the sun is out, and Alaska is at its beautiful best, and it only seems logical to detour the mountain bike up Toilsome Hill Road to the Glen Alps parking lot below Flattop Mountain, and then ride the Gasline, Hillside and associated trails down to the city.

These are the days that remind me why we live here. If you don't cherish the wilderness and the spectacular scenery, there is really no reason to stay in Anchorage. There are, without doubt, warmer and easier places to live.

Coming back up the hill to home, sometimes into a driving rain, I occasionally think about that, although I also often have the luxury of being able to car pool back with the rest of the family or a neighbor. I'm not shy admitting there are quite a few days I select that option.

I don't hate cars. I just hate what they do to us.

On the days when errand-running necessities dictate driving the eco-friendly Ford Escape Hybrid, I do so reluctantly. Why reluctantly?

Because I've found that my mood is significantly better after pedaling to work than after driving, even when the weather is miserable, even when there are close calls with idiot drivers veering into the bike lane on new Elmore Road or elsewhere.

Obviously, this mood stuff is all in my head. That is where all mood stuff exists.

It could, however, be in your head too if the science is to be believed. Study after study after study has concluded that one of the prime benefits of exercise is improved mood.

Still, at a core level, even that isn't really why I pedal.

I pedal because it takes less of a toll on my aging body than running. And I do one or the other because there was a time back in college when I looked in a mirror and the Pillsbury Doughboy stared back. I remember the moment clearly because I'd just squeezed into a wet suit, a task that had proven unexpectedly difficult, in preparation for a dive beneath the ice of a Minnesota lake.

I was, at the time, a sophomore at the University of Minnesota Duluth majoring in beer drinking, a then-legal activity just across the state line in Superior, Wis. After years of trying everything to gain weight as a high-school football player and never succeeding, I was discovering how easy it is to gain weight by embracing the so-called "sedentary lifestyle" just as your maturing metabolism begins to slow.

Over the years, as the active metabolism of youth has shifted increasingly into the plodding metabolism of middle age, this struggle with weight has only grown worse. A lot of people I know have just given up. Statistics on obesity in America indicate that might even be something of a norm.

I couldn't give up because most of the things I like to do -- hiking, skiing, hunting, running, climbing, paddling, cycling -- are a painful struggle for a fat boy.

By athletic performance standards, admittedly, I'm still a fat boy, but at least I'm a fit fat boy who would pass for "lean'' in America today. Only in America would a male with 15 percent body fat (maybe even more at the moment) be considered such, but this is the state of our Fast Food Nation.

Some like to blame genetics. I never bought that argument. It seems so obvious that if the caloric input is cut back far enough or the caloric output is increased enough, the excess body weight disappears. It has usually been easiest for me to exercise.

I like to eat as much as a Labrador retriever, but I've never minded hard, physical work.

And now there's a study out saying that hard work might just be what it's all about in the battle against the bulge or bulges.

Scientists have concluded hard work can even trump genetics.

They are reporting that carriers of an obesity-related gene called FTO -- a gene found in about half of all people of European descent and a gene I'm sure I carry -- are no more prone to weight gain than non-carriers if -- and here's the big if -- they are highly active physically.

"When we looked at the Amish who were the most active, there is suddenly no effect of that gene," Dr. Soren Snitker of the University of Maryland, told the Reuters news agency. The study by Snitker and Evadnie Rampersaud of the University of Miami was published in the latest edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The scientists studied 704 people in the Old Order Amish men and women in Lancaster County, Pa. Among average Americans, people with two copies of the FTO gene are about 70 percent more likely to be obese than those lacking the gene. Snitker and Rampersaud found the same true among Amish subjects who got an FTO gene from both their mothers and their fathers.

But this genetic affect disappeared among the highly active. Exercise overpowered FTO.

People in the most physically active group only had to expend about 900 more calories per day than the low-activity group to avoid the curse of obesity, according to the researchers.

For me, that's 18 to 25 miles on the bike, depending on how hard I ride. Or 13 miles on the shortest, fastest bike route to work and a five-kilometer jog with the dogs at night. Or the short, fast ride coupled with several hours of manual labor around the house in the evening. Or several easy days during the week tied to an hours-long weekend ride with the guys.

Whatever way it gets put together, the payoffs are big:

• Savings of hundreds of dollars in gasoline every year by riding the bike.

• A significant improvement in mood.

• And, most importantly, a healthy body.

What's not to like, other maybe than this city's poorly designed and/or nonexistent system of bike trails?

Outdoors editor Craig Medred is an opinion columnist. Find him online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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