Time Warp Silliness

This has been a strange week. Monday morning I overslept by about 40 minutes. Despite that, I arrived at work no more than four minutes later than usual. Today, I misread the clock and inadvertently got up and ready about 50 minutes EARLY. I caught the error before leaving the house, and so my preparation acquired a much more leisurely pace, but I still left a full 45 minutes earlier than usual, thinking “well, I’m already ready to roll, so maybe we’ll just take it easy and maybe take an alternate route.” Before you knew it, I was lost and it was still dark out.

Anyway, I know the v3 commute route and variants well enough by now that I wasn’t TOO lost and I soon wound up at work. Before you can say “By Jiminy,” I found myself starting work – five minutes earlier than usual.

So, let’s see. I get up 40 minutes late and it delays me 4 minutes. I get up 50 minutes early and I get to work 5 minutes earlier. If we assume this is a fairly linear relationship, it suggests that if I wake up an hour later than I did on Monday, I’ll arrive at work before I leave home. If I get up TWO hours later, I’ll arrive at work before I even get out of bed! Hmm. Y’all think things are linear?

It is well known that traffic (and the associated starts and stops) delays bicycle commuters much less (even cyclists that carefully obey all the signals and signs) than it does motor commuters. Now, you know that there may actually be a time warp effect that makes it possible for a bike commuter to arrive before he/she leaves. Who would have known that it’s possible to travel quicker than they do in Star Trek – on a bike? One to beam up!