I’m a journalist. On any given weekday, I’m scooting around Southern California having meetings, running errands, doing photoshoots and visiting friends. Hollywood, Venice, downtown, Malibu, Pasadena, Long Beach, Orange County, it doesn’t matter. I’ve hit them all on the same day. Hell, some days, I’ll hit them all on the same afternoon. I can do this quickly and efficiently because I get around on a motorcycle.

Five weeks ago, however, I rolled a Ural sidecar off road at 50 mph, breaking my left wrist. Aside from providing a killer story for picking up women, the injury objectively and quantifiably ruined my life. How?

It forced me into a car.

Much more than just a major blow to my carefully cultivated self-image, the simple switch from two wheels to four cost me money (both out of pocket and in lost earnings), strained friendships and made dating a real bitch.

Here’s how.

The Money

I average 50 to 75 miles a day on the road. Not a huge amount, but living in Long Beach, just south of Los Angeles proper, a lot of that mileage is racked up on SoCal’s heavily congested freeways in stop and go traffic. Well, stop and go if you’re in a car.

Working as a motorcycle journalist, I ride many different bikes on a daily basis. On the highway, they average anywhere from 25 to 75 mpg. I’ve never figured out an overall average fuel economy figure because I’m swapping bikes so frequently. It just isn’t a factor at all, so it’s not worth tracking. My usual fuel bill is 10 or 12 bucks every two or three days.

I borrowed a friend’s Mazda3 hatchback while I was unable to ride. It’s got a 2.3-liter engine and a five-speed manual and I averaged roughly 20 mpg crawling through traffic. I racked up 600 or so miles during my two weeks in commute hell, burning through roughly 30 gallons of gas. At $3.75 a gallon, that’s $112.50 spent in just two weeks. Compare that to the $50 or so I would have put into bikes to go the same distance during the same time frame.

That extra $60 or so might not sound too bad until you figure in my lost earnings.

In addition to running a website, I freelance for clients like Wired.com and a bunch of magazines. Being stuck, often literally, in a car for several hours a day for two weeks had a major impact on my productivity. Looking only at my work for Wired.com, I was unable to find time to complete two motorcycle reviews and attend a car launch. The net loss from that? $750. And that’s only one client. That lost productivity was the worst thing about the whole four-wheeled experience.

The Productivity

As a young journalist working in an extremely difficult media market, my entire career is predicated on 10- to 12-hour workdays spent at max efficiency. With two arms and plenty of time, I can crank out 5,000 words or more a day. About two-thirds of that is for Hell For Leather, my motorcycle magazine. The rest is freelance work.

But what happens when that workday is reduced by four hours or so to account for the time spent sitting in traffic? Ask the editors I work for. I missed deadlines. I couldn’t honor all my commitments. And my daily word count dropped below 2,000. I currently owe Wired.com four articles. (I’m catching up, guys, I promise.)

There’s also the question of Hell For Leather. We have a tiny staff compared to our competitors, yet we’ve been doubling and trebling readership over the past couple of years largely because we work so damn hard. As editor, nothing gets published without my input, guidance and help. I write a significant portion of the content, too. Stuck in a car for two weeks? Our traffic dropped by more than 20 percent. It’s hard to run a business when you’re sitting on the Santa Monica Freeway.

The Personal Costs

Borrowing the car from a friend wasn’t such a big deal. I loaned him one of my bikes in exchange. But the frustration of sitting in traffic, the lost revenue and the disappointment of being unable to live up to my potential had huge ramifications on my personal life.

All that, plus the added time necessary to, say, meet a friend for dinner, meant I missed out on personal commitments, neglected some friendships and strained others. The stress meant I drank more, which, combined with sitting still in a car for hours at a time, meant I put on a few pounds.

Being unable to effectively transport myself also meant I had to rely on friends for favors. I spent the entirety of Carmageddon weekend, for instance, at a friend’s house in Hollywood. I’m pretty sure her roommates were sick of the weird long-haired guy on the couch by the third day. If I’d been on a bike, I could have attended the party and made it home through apocalyptic traffic the same night.

Last weekend, I missed a friend’s wedding. I was too swamped catching up on work to take the time off to ride up to San Luis Obispo.

Due largely to how effective a cast and “I rolled a Russian sidecar off road at 50 MPH” are as a pickup line, I’ve started seeing a new girl. She lives about 20 miles away, via the 710, 5 and 101 freeways. Impromptu, um, visits are virtually impossible when it takes 90 minutes to drive 20 miles. On a bike, that same ride is 20 minutes, regardless of time or traffic. I’m sure you can see the advantage.

The Bike

As you may have noticed in the photo, the cast isn’t exactly keeping me off a bike. The first three weeks were spent in a 90-degree, full-arm cast, which is why I had to get around in a big steel cage (Pain meds and whiskey kept me off the road for the first week). Now that I’m in a short cast, I can straighten my arm. And that means I can ride again. Thank God.

I still can’t operate a clutch lever, but I can wrap my hand around the grip. Luckily, that’s enough to operate an Aprilia Mana 850 GT, which is equipped with a CVT instead of a conventional manual transmission. There’s no lever on the left handlebar at all.

This isn’t some specially modified bike or unattainable rarity either. It’s a practical, do-it-all motorcycle that, at $10,999, is around half the cost of the Mazda I was driving. At 45 mpg, it gets more than twice the fuel economy, too. And then there’s that whole performance thing. Equipped with a 75 horsepower V-twin, the Mana accelerates from 0 to 60 in around four seconds. That’s faster than most Porsches, much less Mazdas.

It’s not just its fuel economy, price or clutchless transmission that makes it practical, either.

The Mana comes with a waterproof storage compartment between your legs, where the fuel tank typically is (The Mana’s tank is under the seat for a low center of gravity). Running up to Hollywood to see a girl, I can throw a sweatshirt and my laptop in there, ready for the ride home in the morning. That compartment, plus a backpack, can carry a week’s worth of groceries. As a bonus, it encouraged me to switch from beer to whiskey; strapping a case of beer to the passenger seat tends to draw unwanted police attention, but you can slip a fifth in the storage compartment no problem.

Look, I know it seems the real culprit for all this life ruination is motorcycles. I did break my wrist on a sidecar, after all. But, the injury has been less of a hassle than the transportation problem it caused. Knock on my titanium forearm (installed after a previous accident), but I’ve never hurt myself in mundane daily riding. The injuries have come only when I’ve chosen to do ridiculously dangerous stuff for fun. A motorcycle might have led to the problem, but the ultimate problem was traveling by car.

Even with a cast, I can still safely take advantage of all the benefits two-wheeled travel offers. Since we’re in California, I can legally split lanes, meaning I never need to sit in traffic. I’m saving money on gas and no longer need to pay for parking. I can make meetings, have time to write articles and even get laid. Most importantly, I can head for twisty roads in the mountains after work to blow off all the stress brought by two weeks in a car.

If you’re reading this before getting in a car to head home, you’re about to get stuck in a traffic jam. With this Aprilia, I can ride a motorcycle in a cast and avoid all that crap. You can too. So what’s your excuse?

Photo: Sean Smith/Hell For Leather