Rather than blog about our Thanksgiving trip I will drop a quick note on something that came to mind as we were driving to and from Blacksburg. I think that blogging about our trip there would be kind of boring. Not that our time there was boring, because it was fun, despite some childreny madness.

So I drove most of the way to and from Virginia. That in and of itself is noteworthy, because typically Carolyn does most of the driving. In fact, a few years a couple from our ward (not old folks either – these people were younger than us) saw Carolyn driving us and asked if I had my driver’s license. Apparently it was unheard of that she would do the driving unless I didn’t have a license or something. But anyways…

As we were driving through the curvy mountains of West Virginia, I started trying to take the inside lane on curves where possible. So if we were curving to the right, I’d go to the right lane, whereas if the road was curving to the left, I’d take the left lane. Obviously this isn’t always possible due to having to pass cars or cars being in your way, but I was trying to do it.

The reasoning behind this is that driving on the inside takes less distance. If this does not make intuitive sense to you, think of a high school track. If you’re running something that doesn’t take a whole lap (like the 200 meter), the racers that are in the inside lanes start further back, so that everyone has to run the same distance.

I tried to do some calculations in my head as to how many miles you would save if you were able to do this, but it was hard because so many of the variables are unknown, at least to me while I was driving. I tried to assume that the curve of each road was equivalent to a 60 degree arc of a circle, and that the distance around each curve was 1/10 of a mile. I did know the ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle (PI baby!) but I decided that when I got back I would use Google Maps to try and plot out the points to see what I could figure out. So hold on a sec.

Okay I’m back. I plotted using the google maps api and the scripts I wrote for my Madeira biking adventure 2 plots. One used the outside lane and one the inside lane. This was about a 2.3 mile trip just north of where 64 and 77 split south of Beckley WV. The inside lane was 2.3088 miles and the outside 2.3235. So if that’s indicative of things, over a 50 mile trip you might save half a mile. Probably not worth it. But it’s fun to do anyways 🙂