The light-timing controversy continues. Rob writes that, among other things, he: Drive[s] a route based on time -- if it's before 7:15am, I'll take route A, but after that it forces a left turn w/o a light onto a super-busy street, so I take route B; Know[s] that it takes 25 minutes to get in, 30-35 to get home depending on when I leave;....Know[s] roughly how long I have to get through a light when the green goes stale (and the orange hand starts blinking).

Now, all that makes sense to me, because those actions don't require extended mathmatical analysis. However, he goes on to say:

[W]hen I worked/lived where I rode my bike 75% of the time, I had every stoplight along the route timed according to exactly the number of times the orange hand flashed. Folsom and Canyon was 18, I think. (It's been 4 years.) Folsom and Valmont was 12, plus there was the bike lane crossover. I basically knew exactly how close (like "at or beyond the third shrub in the median") I had to be when the hand started flashing to either exert and make it through or give up and coast to the red.

I don't think this is compulsive at all, because I know how much effort it takes, just what it feels like to your butt and thighs, to start moving on a bike. Because it's my butt and thighs that hurt if I'm doing a lot of stopping and starting, as far as I'm concerned it's worth paying attention. In a car, it's no real effort to stop and start, so I can't imagine bothering with it.

Then my dad came back with this: [I]t's not that we are a compulsive and regimented family. It's those traffic engineers. They are the ones who sequence the lights like that. Why do they do that? Drivers who adjust speed to take advantage of the sequenced lights move more smoothly, and more efficiently. Cuts congestion, saves gas, decreases pollution and helps avoid global warming. How could anyone be against that?

Oooh, a hit, a palpable hit! He's getting me where my lefty street cred lives! (I knew I shouldn't have put that "invisible sneer tag" around Republican.) He's right -- the lights are timed for a reason, and it's not just so analytical folks like Wendy and dad can have the thrill of "beating the system." My take has been "why bother learning the lights, because (1) it takes effort to do that, and (2) it takes very little effort to stop and start a car." Easy for me, sitting on my ass in the climate-controlled splendor of my Geo Prizm, but not so easy on the car or on the environment. Isn't learning the light patterns the least I can do, just one effort I can take to make sure polar bears don't starve?

Damn my idealist leanings! All right, Wendy and Dad, you win this one.

And I hasten to add that I tend to take public transport to work, thus doing my bit to save the polar bears and penguins.