Postcards from New Zealand: Day Fifty-One

The past few weeks, I’ve been taking Aldo to the train station in the morning and driving into town later in the day, so that he doesn’t spend the first hour of the workday sitting in traffic. The train in the morning seems to come on time, which is a good thing, because the trains in the evening tend to depart a few minutes early. I think that a train that departs 3 minutes early is worse than a train that departs 3 minutes late, but there is a tipping point somewhere; a train that departs 3 minutes early may be better than a train that departs 25 minutes late. The precise location of the tipping point also depends on the length of time until the next train. At night, when the trains only come once on the hour, more lateness is acceptable as opposed to a bit of earliness.