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Long Drivesknowledge accumulated by Philip Greenspun; updated September 2008 |
"Chew gum," my friend Donna said. "My brother does a lot of long
distance driving and he says it will keep you awake."
Donna is beautiful, well-traveled, international, and sophisticated. I listened to her. She was right.
An old Journal of the Acoustical Society of America article
studied the effects of moderate amounts of noise. Ambient noise
above 70 db SPL was found to make human subjects tired and impair their
thought processes. Noise below the threshold was barely fatiguing at
all. Note that a car traveling at 70 mph generates approximately 70 db
SPL of noise.
If you have a Lexus luxury sedan, you're safe because the noise level at
70 mph is about 65 db SPL. Note that every drop of 1 db is significant
and 5 db less noise is much much quieter. This is a logarithmic scale
after all. If you have a modern standard car, you're probably between
68-70 db. Minivans and compacts tend to be noisier at 72-73 db SPL. A
sports car such as a Corvette or a Porsche will be well above 75 db SPL.
Car & Driver magazine reports these important numbers if
you're interested in a particular car.
Every person's threshold will be different, but basically you can drive much longer distances comfortably if road noise isn't wearing you out.
Your soul isn't going to be improved by listening to the Eagles'
Hotel California for the 1000th time. You probably won't
be able to appreciate the subtleties of the Bartok String Quartets
above the noise of the road. Interstates don't have to be wastelands.
Listen to a book on tape. Listen to a lecture.
I prefer abridged books on tape. You can only listen about 1/3rd as quickly as you can read. Something that might be compelling if read for three hours can be boring if drawn out to nine hours. Most modern novels are badly written but have very interesting plots. An abridgment preserves the plot and skips some flowery prose that was probably not up to Henry James standards anyway.
I even like abridgments of classics. I listened to Ulysses for six hours while driving across Kansas in Travels with Samantha. It didn't need to be longer.
If you really decide to get serious about learning while on the road, a good thing to do is stock up on foreign language tapes. My favorite by far is the Pimsleur series:
To hear a lot of unfamiliar words, but still be listening to what is nominally English, the Teaching Company sells audio and video tapes of America's most dynamic university professors. You'd be surprised how compelling history, literature, and philosophy lectures can be. Check these Teaching Company reviews for specific course recommendations.
Of course, after 10 days in an Acura NSX, the minivan feels dangerously out of control, but eventually the longing for an automotive partner fades and you can live with the automotive appliance again.
During the Alaska trip, I used the following minivan filing system:
