Can I join but track hours instead of miles? Until I start biking to work, I go in random directions and don't know how much mileage I'm getting.
Get yourself a bike computer. They can be found dirt cheap on craigslist or whatever second-hand-trading-platform-thing you have locally, or even buy a new cheap one, they're not that expensive. Forgo all the fancy features, the only ones that actually get used are the speedometer and odometer, and
every model has those. (Maybe the average speed too, but you can do that one yourself with the odometer and a stopwatch and almost every one has that anyway)
As an added bonus you'll automatically know when to perform scheduled maintenance on your machine, which means a significantly longer, cheaper and happier life for your bike.
However you can always use a GPS, either together with the computer or as a substitute (as I am currently doing because I seem to have lost mine during the winter, heh)
I use the app "jogtracker" on my cell phone which uses GPS and gives you your mileage. The paid version gives incline, speed and some other info.
You can use
any GPS-logging application, there are tons of them available. Most are also combined with mapping software, which is useful. My favorite used to be (and in some cases still is) Maverick for its ability to save tons of different maps&store them offline, plus a no-nonsense interface.
It is freemium, meaning there is a limit on track-recording, though, something like 500 points max and you can view no more than 10 or so, but no cap on recording, bwahaha. Currently trying to find a better alternative, though.
. Make sure it stores its tracks in
gpx format, since most of the stats are interesting
after the fact, and gpx is the de-facto standard for all kinds of powerful software, so you can later load that into your computer and get all the stats you want.
There's also Strava which I've personally never tried but was told that it's great. This seems to be an all-in-one biking stats aggregator.