It seems that with gas prices toeing the $3.50 mark'give it a year'all those stable long-distance relationships no longer look economically feasible.
This became apparent one night when my friend Gustav opened up his heart during a game of Risk and told me about this doll he met from Cincinnati.
She's perfect
he said while jangling the dice, then going on to list those perfect attributes. But she's so far man. It takes like three hours to get out there. That's what
six hours there and back every weekend until break? [Shuck]'s expensive.
As Siberia fell to my Blue forces, he grabbed a scrap of paper and drew out some numbers. Say gas is $3.15 and it's about 150 miles to get there. I get like 20 miles per gallon. There and back
that's...$48 a week
then it's like...$600/quarter just to see this girl.
I am inept at math and cheat at Risk, so I palmed a few soldiers and cavalry as he elaborated on his equation: Take miles per gallon (e) divided by roundtrip distance (d) to get gallons used, which you then multiply by the gas price (p) to get (x). To finish it, multiply (x) by the number of visits per quarter (y).
All together, it is: [(d/m)p]y. Something like that.
Gustav's (y) was four so far, looking to be about 12.
Is she worth it? I asked.
He rubbed his face and sighed, Six hundred dollars is expensive
man.
While you can never put a price on love, you still can, theoretically, put a price on its convenience. Gustav's price is actually about $642/quarter ($54.18/visit) because Cincinnati is about 170 miles away.
Still, Gustav serves as a good example of how much somebody will go for some form of love. Using most of his information, (20 mpg Escort, Athens as the starting point, $3.15/g), here are the base costs of love using Gustav's long distance relationship (LDR) equation, there and back but without (y):
Akron: 175m = $55.00
Cleveland: 218m = $68.67
Columbus: 75m = $23.60
Toledo: 220m = $69.30
But these are just numbers and hardly measure how strongly one feels about the person(s) in question. That's why I've come up with a few more variables to take into account. These are all on the 1-10 scale, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest.
-How much do you love the person? (Measure with hands if needed.)
-Level of butterflies just before contact.
-Overall happiness when around the person within a day.
-Overall irritation when around the person the next day.
-Adorableness of the person's ticks and foibles.
-How is the coitus? (Consider duration, enthusiasm and frequency'multiply if needed.)
-If the above is not applicable, how is the cuddling/hand-holding/late-night games of mailbox?
By taking these results and maybe multiplying or dividing them with the initial equation, you get some further arbitrary value that could, theoretically, help you figure out the viability of the LDR in question.
Regardless, these rising costs of travel could lead to people finding their true loves in more economically viable locations. Those stories of people holding out for years and years just to stay with his or her true love could, theoretically, be wiped out for a cheaper thrill.
But it could also ' once more theoretically ' weed out the puppy loves from the true loves. If gas hits the $4 mark and a guy or girl is still willing to drive off to Cleveland every other weekend G
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Justin Noga
