An hour from Austin: a rant.

Twice recently on BBC Radio I have heard a place described as being an hour north of Austin.

Now, a light-year is a distance (it's how far light travels in a year, which is about about 1000000000000 kilometres) but an hour isn't.

But how far is an hour? Is that an hour's walk? An hour's cycling? Or in the journey taking place in a car? Or a train? Or a plane?

And what sort of walking/cycling/car/train/plane?

Austin is in Texas, and I suspect that there the majority of journeys there are done by car. But how fast the cars go...

...hang on, I can work it out. The place in question was Pflugerville, and the distance from Austin is given on Google as seventeen point eight miles.

Seventeen point eight miles an hour...

...it has to be a bicycle, then, doesn't it.

Odd.

Unless the traffic is just terrible.

Word To Use Today: hour. An hour a unit of time. The word comes from the Old French hore, from the Latin hōra, from the Greek word for season.