I wanted to meet Peter Jerde in Chicago for lunch, which turned into a late lunch, which turned into dinner.  Upon entering the greater Chicago area I encountered something I’d largely missed so far on my trek across vast open landscapes and barely tamed wilds: traffic.  It was novel at first, the idea of having a car immediately in front of me that was moving at a speed of less than 10 miles per hour seemed neat.  Maybe I could get out of my car and greet them, see how their driving was going, but as the slowness entered the second hour of moving 7 MPH or less I became…unaffected.  While being passed by a windblown Arby’s bag was disheartening, having driven about 10,000 miles, the context of traffic was a temporary inconvenience that moved my average speed for the entire trip down on the order of a tenth of a mile per hour, I’ll live.

Pants and I met at a Wendy’s where we were both hoodwinked by a savvy salesperson.  We were both asked “medium or large” a false choice as small was also an option but a question to which everyone I heard picked one of these two.  Tricky.  We ate, he showed me his Prius modifications and I shortly thereafter left for Fort Wayne, a 2.5 hour drive.  I was cruising along thinking I’d get to Banks’ house shortly before midnight, the time I’d told him I’d arrive when he shot me a text asking me where I was.  Oh.  Crap.  Prior to 2006, Indiana didn’t observe DST, making it effectively in the Central Time Zone when the rest of the country was under DST.  In 2006, Indiana started observing DST again, a fact I forgot, making me an hour late.  I floored it.  I screamed across towns and Rt. 30 shaving minutes off of my route… until I hit a speed  trap about 3 minutes from Banks’ house, erasing any semblance of a benefit from my speeding.  The ticket was for $181, but again context, a mere 1.5 cents a mile.