Zuki the Suzuki and the Mean Radius of Needs

I recently bought a car. A silver 2011 Suzuki SX4 Sedan (4-door, CVT transmission, sport trim). Naturally, I spent some time thinking of what to name it. I liked the ring of “Zuki the Suzuki”, so the name stuck.

It’s crazy how much my daily routine has changed. Earlier, the only ways for me to get around Terre Haute were to hitch a ride with a friend or cycle around town. There’s virtually no public transportation, and most roads are not cyclist-friendly. I thought I’d be making more trips to Bloomington, Indianapolis, and Chicago with a car. I haven’t, but just having the freedom to go anywhere I want has made me so much… happier.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a “Mean Radius of Needs” that every person has. This Radius is defined as the (weighted?) average of the travel times to the things one values in life, to where they reside.

For example, if I have a car and live 10 minutes away from school and the grocery store, 5 minutes away from friends, 30 minutes from a park I can run/trek in, and 20 minutes away from a downtown with things to keep me busy, my Mean Radius of Needs would be ~16 minutes. Without a car, the mean radius becomes really large. Considering the average car travels ~5x faster than a cyclist, this Mean Radius would scale up by a factor of 5 to 80 minutes. That’s a significantly larger chunk of one’s day.

The larger this radius, the more isolated one may feel.

When I moved to college in Terre Haute (population: 50,000) from Bangalore (population: 13,000,000) three years ago, my family and friends were all 20 hours away by flight. I did live on campus, but nice restaurants were 30 minutes away by bike, while other “city things” (Indianapolis) were at least 1 hour away, but I had no way to get there. My Radius of Needs was about 5 hours, and while I’ve been alone before, this was the first time I felt lonely.

Since then, I placed more importance on the things physically near me: my research, classes, lifting, and cycling. I also moved into a house with some cool guys I’ve become good friends with. Now, with my car, my radius is about 6 minutes (excluding family in India because that makes it 2 hours). I think it’s important to have tastes that change with time and place to actively minimize one’s Mean Radius of Needs.

Or you can just buy a really, really, really, ridiculously fast Japanese sports car.