Differences
Here's one of those moments where it's evident that Robin and I look at the world in distinctly different ways.
Nobody likes traffic jams, of course, especially when it's approaching sunset, and you still have three-hundred someodd miles (depending on your path) to go. But there are different ways to approach a traffic jam. When Robin finds herself in a traffic jam, she tends to just wait it out. Gut it through. Putter along with everybody else. When I find myself in one, my preference is to start looking for some alternate route. There are lots of roads in the world, I know, and I'm not somebody who gets lost easily, so I think it's worth it to go exploring. I'd rather be moving over great distances than sitting still over a short distance, anyway. (That, incidentally, is why Los Angeles traffic jams bother me way less than Chicago traffic jams. Los Angeles traffic jams run a hundred miles, but they move.) Robin often finds my urge to turn long delays into something much longer annoying.
And so, when we got to the traffic jam at Thoreau, I started poking through internet maps on my telephone to find an alternate path around it. I soon learned that I was wrong about the old Route 66 going through ... but what if we went back to Thoreau? And what if we took a road north for a while, and then cut over here ... it's New Mexico, so that road might be dirt, but it's not that long ... is it? I shrugged, said what the Hell, and took off. What was the worst that could happen?
Well, the thing that happened was that it turned out to be way longer a detour than I'd assumed it would be, as telephone maps aren't great at conveying scale. A cut-through I thought was maybe three miles north of Thoreau was thirteen miles north of Thoreau, and Robin was a bit miffed by the time we got to it. Especially when she asked me about it 10 miles up, and I said it might not be paved. But it was paved, and the scenery turned out to be really nice. And there wasn't a traffic jam on I-40 when we finally got to Gallup, so I consider it a success.
Differences
Here's one of those moments where it's evident that Robin and I look at the world in distinctly different ways.
Nobody likes traffic jams, of course, especially when it's approaching sunset, and you still have three-hundred someodd miles (depending on your path) to go. But there are different ways to approach a traffic jam. When Robin finds herself in a traffic jam, she tends to just wait it out. Gut it through. Putter along with everybody else. When I find myself in one, my preference is to start looking for some alternate route. There are lots of roads in the world, I know, and I'm not somebody who gets lost easily, so I think it's worth it to go exploring. I'd rather be moving over great distances than sitting still over a short distance, anyway. (That, incidentally, is why Los Angeles traffic jams bother me way less than Chicago traffic jams. Los Angeles traffic jams run a hundred miles, but they move.) Robin often finds my urge to turn long delays into something much longer annoying.
And so, when we got to the traffic jam at Thoreau, I started poking through internet maps on my telephone to find an alternate path around it. I soon learned that I was wrong about the old Route 66 going through ... but what if we went back to Thoreau? And what if we took a road north for a while, and then cut over here ... it's New Mexico, so that road might be dirt, but it's not that long ... is it? I shrugged, said what the Hell, and took off. What was the worst that could happen?
Well, the thing that happened was that it turned out to be way longer a detour than I'd assumed it would be, as telephone maps aren't great at conveying scale. A cut-through I thought was maybe three miles north of Thoreau was thirteen miles north of Thoreau, and Robin was a bit miffed by the time we got to it. Especially when she asked me about it 10 miles up, and I said it might not be paved. But it was paved, and the scenery turned out to be really nice. And there wasn't a traffic jam on I-40 when we finally got to Gallup, so I consider it a success.