Eating, math, science with a Biblical quote, road artifacts

We have learned that eating enough is a very important part of making a good day on the bikes. Today after a large continental breakfast, lunch at Arby's and after doing several long climbs we went into a convenience store with good intentions of picking up a 6-pack of granola bars but they didn't have any 6-packs so we got these pre-packaged pies. The "nutrition" information is below. Biking takes approximately 35 calories per mile so the calories below were all used up in about 14 miles.

In addition to the pleasure of biking being related to the calories consumed, I decided today that it is also proportional to the tail wind and the square of the width of the road shoulder as long as there's not too much debris. But the pleasure is inversely proportional to the road kill per mile, the traffic and especially truck traffic.*

Today was our hilliest day so far. We only covered 65 miles. I hit over 40 mph on 5 different hills. For quite a while 40.9 was my peak and I was braking on that hill! Later, that was surpassed by a maximum of 41.9 however, the average today was 11 - our slowest day so far. Why does our day of highest speed also come with the lowest average you ask? Because (and here's the science lesson) what you gain in speed down the hill is mostly eaten up by wind resistance with no way of gaining it back up the other side. More technical explanation below.**

I entertained myself today on the long, long climbs by watching for interesting things along the road. Here's what I found today that I could easily put in my pockets:

I have no idea what's on the DVD - I've already pitched it. The Sharpie actually works, the dime might buy me a piece of gum. The switchblade was probably used in a crime and then abandoned :-). You probably can't read that it's quality steel from China.

Then there was this that I didn't want to put in my pocket:

We see so much road kill. I've seen 4 snakes, a cardinal, a whole family of raccoons, the bloated carcass of a dog and of course the usual deer, skunks, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrel, mice, moles and many unrecognizable flattened remains as above.

Footnotes:
* for Jonathan and actually anyone else with at least some memory of high school math it could be expressed this way:

P = k W² * B * C
           t * T² * D
Where:
P = pleasure
k = some constant
W = Width of the shoulder of the road
B = Breeze on your back
C = calories consumed
t = car traffic
T = truck traffic
D = debris on the shoulder


**I actually worked the science of this last night. It's high school level so bear with me. When going down hill your wind resistance is proportional to the square of your speed so you never have anywhere near enough momentum from whizzing down the hill to take you even a short distance up the next. For example: suppose you have a 10 mile level course that you need to apply a constant 2 pounds of force to overcome the wind resistance (a reasonable number according to the almost encyclopedic mechanical data in my brother's head). So over the 10 mile course you have done 20 mile pounds of work. (Remember from high school science that work is defined as force time distance, usually expressed in foot - pounds.)
Now suppose instead of a level course you go down 5 miles at four times the speed you go on the level (like me today). The force it takes to go 4 times the speed is 16 times as much (4X4 since wind resistance is proportional to the square of your speed). So for 5 miles it takes 5X16 or 80 mile pounds of work. The force behind that is almost all supplied by gravity but eaten by the wind. Now when you go back up the other side, you have to lift the whole gross weight of you and your bike and luggage back up against gravity with no help from the momentum gained going down. Ecclesiastes 5:16 And this also is a sore evil, ... and what profit hath he that hath labored for the wind?

If you read this far I have one question for you. Don't you have anything productive to do?