Real Rad Racer

Every day when I come home from work, I drive/coast down a 0.8 mile hill that has an overall 12% grade.  The first .5 miles (at a 8% grade) are through a residential area with five speed humps, we'll say at every tenth of a mile (or every 528 feet).  The last .3 miles are down a 10% grade hill, which is pretty steep when you consider it’s only ~1584 feet. Trust me, I did the math.

After driving/coasting this hill for a while I began to think in terms of racing and time trial video games.  My thought process was more like, “If this was a video game, how would it be scored,” rather than “I’m going to drive this like a video game and fuck real world physics.”  

The following are how I would figure out the final “score:”

1) After passing a specific marker (which is .2 miles from the turn onto Pimlico and the time starts), the car is shifted into neutral.
2) While passing said marker, the car can be traveling no faster than 30mph.
3) Time starts once the turn onto Pimlico from Santa Anita Drive is made.
4) Final Time is determined at the intersection of Pimlico and Willamette Drive.
5) “Penalties” are taken for the length of time the brake pedal is depressed.
6) “Brake Times” are added together then added to the Final Time to determine the Total Time.

1. 
   

Now I realize the that this train of thought and practice could be very disastrous.  However, I’m not going to be intentionally trying to beat my “best time” as I’m not looking at my stopwatch while careening down the hill.  And I’m not going to be doing anything that will lead to permanent damage to my car as there’s no bus service to work and I’d rather not walk 2.5 miles up hill.  I also realize that my penalties are solely based on my reaction time pressing the “lap” button on my stopwatch and pressing it again when I depress and release the brakes, although I can’t really calculate the deviation of potential error in those numbers, so we’ll just say that they’re accurate and go with that.

So on those notes, here’re my times as I only recently began recording my them:

5/9/12  

Final Time:   1.46.68

Penalty Time: 0.26.27  (Average Break Time: 0.02.19)

Total Time: 2.12.95

5/10/12

Final Time: 1.43.61

Penalty Time: 0.26.14  (Average Break Time:  0.02.18)

Total Time: 2.09.75

5/11/12

Final Time: 1.49.97

Penalty Time: 0.27.11 (Average Break Time:  0.02.46)

Total Time: 2.17.08

5/13/12

Final Time: 1.44.00

Penalty Time: 0.28.02  (Average Break Time:  2.80)

Total Time: 2.12.02

So what is the final conclusion?  I don’t know.  I didn’t have a hypothesis so I can’t have a desired outcome.  I just wanted to do something that I’d thought about for a number of months.

[On a side note story: Back in elementary and jr. high school, whenever I rode my bike to school or to a friends’ house, I would intentionally ride my bike over the sewer lids.  I would give myself 1 points for the larger 2 foot wide lids and 5 points for the smaller (~1 foot wide) lids.  It would probably take me about twice as long to ride somewhere but it was fun to see what my “score” was at the end of the ride.   And no, that was not how I fell off my bike that one day in 7th grade that led me to the hospital.  That day I was riding over wet leaves.]

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Shifting is for the Weak