Slow Driving
Sarah can be a bit literal at times.
Today I drove the grandchildren to school, and on my return what seemed like hours later I remarked that we could have walked in the time it took me to drive. Sarah of course - and quite correctly - contradicted me. Sometimes Sarah does not permit hyperbole.
However, I was motivated to check. And she was right. But there is more to it.
When you drive, you have to go a more circuitous route - 3 miles in total, each way. In today's traffic, that took me about 20 minutes each way. To walk, I would have followed the towpath along the canal most of the way - 2 miles, so only two thirds of the distance. At my regular walking pace of 12 minutes per km (20 minutes per mile) that would have taken me 40 minutes each way - twice as long as the car journey. With the grandchildren, walking slower, diverting off to points of interest, and probably stopping occasionally to complain of various ephemeral aches and pains and reasons why they could not walk further, it would have taken longer.
It is interesting that in running and walking we tend to measure our speed in minutes per mile, whereas driving we measure in miles per hour. 30 miles per hour being of course two minutes per mile. I think it reveals our priorities: when we drive we are concerned with how many miles we cover in the time we have available; whereas when we walk we are concerned with how long it will take. The difference is subtle: in the one case the goal is to accomplish something within the limited resource of time, while in the other it is to gauge how much time we need. Time is short, or time is what we allocate to do something.
Given today's traffic I was driving at an average of about 7 minutes per mile, which is about 8 1/2 miles per hour. That was on roads rated nominally as variously 20, 30, 40 and 60 miles per hour. Google estimates the drive should have taken 10 minutes, so an average of 18 miles per hour, or just over 3 minutes per mile.
Had I run, at my regular pace of 6 minutes per mile, it would have taken me 18 minutes each way. So I should have complained that I could have run in the time it took me to drive, and then Sarah would not have been able to contradict me. Actually 18 minutes would have been less than the 20 it took by car, so running would have been faster.
That is actually quite revealing, that you could beat a car in a race - your win being due to traffic slowing the car down, and roads forcing the car to go further.
But these figures, fascinating as they are (to me, at least..) are not the whole point.
Let's suppose we had cycled. My cycling speed averages 12 minutes per km, which is 19 minutes per mile. Then I could again have beaten the car, and cycling at 12 minutes per km is not a big deal - it is reasonably effortless, due to the great efficiency of the bike, and certainly much less effort than running. With the grandchildren - both do have bikes - we might have been slower: but on the other hand they do tend to race against Grandad so we might have even gone faster.
Regardless of the precise details of speed and times, we could easily have got there in at least similar time by cycling - and had a lot more fun. So next time, weather permitting, that is what we will do.
But let's consider the walking option again. Walking would have taken twice as long as driving - 40 minutes each way. So it clearly loses when measured by time. And we are all busy people, and time is short, and we do have to rush about. I am actually quite busy sometimes - a lot of the time, in fact - but when I am not, I am not. That is, when I am not busy I do have time - I allocate that time and fill it with things that need to be done or things I want to do, but I have discretion, I can choose (sometimes..). Today was such a day. I have planned to do certain things - writing a new book, tagging photographs for Flickr, reasoning about a question of quantum physics for a talk I am giving in January - but I can be flexible and change those plans. So I could easily have walked. We would have had to set out 20 minutes earlier, but then there was a bit of kerfuffling around shuffling cars before I could get the car out of the drive, so in a way the drive time started five minutes before we actually got the car seats in the car and the car out of the drive. But we would have had to set out earlier. But if we had, we would have done a nice walk along the canal, and probably burbled away about this and that as we did, and had a really nice time - as one does, when one walks. You could say that by taking a total of 80 minutes to walk, instead of 40 minutes to drive, I would have 'lost' 40 minutes. That is how we tend to think, isn't it? We hate to 'lose' time. But it wouldn't have been 'lost', would it? Time on a nice walk, with my nice grandchildren, would not have been 'lost' or 'wasted'- it would have been gained.
So we could have had a nice walk, and I could have had a nice time with the grandchildren - nicer than calling out to them in the back of the car while in a traffic jam (nice as those random dialogues are). But I would have had to be ready a bit earlier, and have accepted that I would 'lose' some time from my day. And that would have been nice.
So next time, it is bikes or on foot.
Today I drove the grandchildren to school, and on my return what seemed like hours later I remarked that we could have walked in the time it took me to drive. Sarah of course - and quite correctly - contradicted me. Sometimes Sarah does not permit hyperbole.
However, I was motivated to check. And she was right. But there is more to it.
When you drive, you have to go a more circuitous route - 3 miles in total, each way. In today's traffic, that took me about 20 minutes each way. To walk, I would have followed the towpath along the canal most of the way - 2 miles, so only two thirds of the distance. At my regular walking pace of 12 minutes per km (20 minutes per mile) that would have taken me 40 minutes each way - twice as long as the car journey. With the grandchildren, walking slower, diverting off to points of interest, and probably stopping occasionally to complain of various ephemeral aches and pains and reasons why they could not walk further, it would have taken longer.
It is interesting that in running and walking we tend to measure our speed in minutes per mile, whereas driving we measure in miles per hour. 30 miles per hour being of course two minutes per mile. I think it reveals our priorities: when we drive we are concerned with how many miles we cover in the time we have available; whereas when we walk we are concerned with how long it will take. The difference is subtle: in the one case the goal is to accomplish something within the limited resource of time, while in the other it is to gauge how much time we need. Time is short, or time is what we allocate to do something.
Given today's traffic I was driving at an average of about 7 minutes per mile, which is about 8 1/2 miles per hour. That was on roads rated nominally as variously 20, 30, 40 and 60 miles per hour. Google estimates the drive should have taken 10 minutes, so an average of 18 miles per hour, or just over 3 minutes per mile.
Had I run, at my regular pace of 6 minutes per mile, it would have taken me 18 minutes each way. So I should have complained that I could have run in the time it took me to drive, and then Sarah would not have been able to contradict me. Actually 18 minutes would have been less than the 20 it took by car, so running would have been faster.
That is actually quite revealing, that you could beat a car in a race - your win being due to traffic slowing the car down, and roads forcing the car to go further.
But these figures, fascinating as they are (to me, at least..) are not the whole point.
Let's suppose we had cycled. My cycling speed averages 12 minutes per km, which is 19 minutes per mile. Then I could again have beaten the car, and cycling at 12 minutes per km is not a big deal - it is reasonably effortless, due to the great efficiency of the bike, and certainly much less effort than running. With the grandchildren - both do have bikes - we might have been slower: but on the other hand they do tend to race against Grandad so we might have even gone faster.
Regardless of the precise details of speed and times, we could easily have got there in at least similar time by cycling - and had a lot more fun. So next time, weather permitting, that is what we will do.
But let's consider the walking option again. Walking would have taken twice as long as driving - 40 minutes each way. So it clearly loses when measured by time. And we are all busy people, and time is short, and we do have to rush about. I am actually quite busy sometimes - a lot of the time, in fact - but when I am not, I am not. That is, when I am not busy I do have time - I allocate that time and fill it with things that need to be done or things I want to do, but I have discretion, I can choose (sometimes..). Today was such a day. I have planned to do certain things - writing a new book, tagging photographs for Flickr, reasoning about a question of quantum physics for a talk I am giving in January - but I can be flexible and change those plans. So I could easily have walked. We would have had to set out 20 minutes earlier, but then there was a bit of kerfuffling around shuffling cars before I could get the car out of the drive, so in a way the drive time started five minutes before we actually got the car seats in the car and the car out of the drive. But we would have had to set out earlier. But if we had, we would have done a nice walk along the canal, and probably burbled away about this and that as we did, and had a really nice time - as one does, when one walks. You could say that by taking a total of 80 minutes to walk, instead of 40 minutes to drive, I would have 'lost' 40 minutes. That is how we tend to think, isn't it? We hate to 'lose' time. But it wouldn't have been 'lost', would it? Time on a nice walk, with my nice grandchildren, would not have been 'lost' or 'wasted'- it would have been gained.
So we could have had a nice walk, and I could have had a nice time with the grandchildren - nicer than calling out to them in the back of the car while in a traffic jam (nice as those random dialogues are). But I would have had to be ready a bit earlier, and have accepted that I would 'lose' some time from my day. And that would have been nice.
So next time, it is bikes or on foot.
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