Santa Clarita, California
This is our house in Santa Clarita, California. We lived there when
I worked for Electronic Arts as a computer game programmer. I worked on the network code for
Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour
and Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth.
For years, I swore I would never live in LA but after actually living
there for awhile, we decided it wasn't so bad. It was the job
that I really hated. Everything else was at least tolerable.
For most people, traffic can be the worst part of LA.
The commute
from my home in Santa Clarita to my job at EA in Playa Vista was a
monumental 37.5 files each way. It easily takes two hours to make
that trip in a car during rush hour, even worse on really bad
days. Instead, I rode my motorcycle. Between the car pool
lane and lane splitting, it consistently took me 30-40 minutes
regardless of traffic conditions. My little Suzuki SV650 was the
perfect motorcycle for LA traffic.
Here's a riddle for you. Every day I would take exactly the same
route to and from work. Every other day I'd fill up the tank with
gas. At the gas station I'd add approximately three gallons for
about $6 (Don't you wish gas was still that cheap). Then I'd reset
the trip odometer after noting that I had traveled almost exactly 152
miles since the previous fill up.
This was very consistent, 152 miles and 3 gallons every other
day. Then one day I noticed that it was only 150 miles.
Nothing else changed, my route was exactly the same, the amount of gas
was the same but the mileage was now consistently 2 miles less.
How did work get two miles closer to home?
Answer
I replaced the front tire. The old tire had worn thin so it had
less rubber and hence a slightly smaller diameter than the new
tire. Since the odometer measures distance by counting how
many times the front tire spins around, a larger front tire meant it
took fewer spins to get me to and from work. You can do the math
yourself. The new trip was 2 miles shorter out of 150 miles so
2/150 shows that the new tire was 1.33% larger than the old tire.
With a 25 inch tire, that's about 1/6 inch of tread wear.
Seems about right.
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