(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 45)

For years driving back and forth to New York I’d run into traffic and think, “I wish I could have known this was here and managed to avoid it in some way.”

I’d imagine a way around the stoppage by taking an exit and driving through the side streets of some Connecticut town until we were past the obstruction and I could get back on the highway.

And that’s one of the ways I would while away the time in my mind as we inched along.

Similar to how I always wondered if there would be a way I could watch the Mets on TV at home in Massachusetts…technology has caught up with my imagination.

But you know me, I like my routine - Unless there’s some kind of major construction, I take the same route back and forth between Framingham and New York.

Lately, though, I’ve been open to variations on the route - depending on wha the GPS tells me to do.

Back in the early 2000s, when the GPS technology was pretty new, Kathy was an early adopter - she got a TomTom pretty early on. It was good at giving routes, but not good at re-directing.

Then came the phones, and the real-time technology that factored in traffic information.

The problem was I never had it in a good phone form that I could easily look at it while driving.

Also, until recently the real-time traffic information just told you about traffic and didn’t really redirect you without a bunch of distracting work typing into the phone.

So I never really bought into it.

Things changed when I got my new (three years ago) car and could plug the phone right into the dashboard display. And then things changed again when my daughter showed me how to get the actual map display on the dashboard. (I hadn’t figured out how to change it from the turn-by-turn directions.)

For a long time, though, I was still resistant to Kathy even pulling up GPS on her phone while I was driving. There were times we would leave and it would be a prime traffic time and I just needed to suck it up and deal with it.

It’s hard for me to get a ETA for a destination and not try to beat it.

And then it feels fruitless when the arrival time is set and barely nudges down…but if there’s an accident and unexpected traffic, it jumps higher by leaps and bounds.

These weekly trips to New York have been a good transition into using the GPS for the way it is intended.

On Sunday mornings there’s hardly any traffic. (Going back is another story - some weeks I breeze in the evening, some weeks there are weird slowdowns.) Sunday mornings are like going down Christmas morning - not a lot of people are on the highways.

So I can usually get from Framingham to Queens in 2 hours, 50 minutes…maybe 2:45 depending on what the GPS tells me.

It has me sometimes take slightly different routes in Connecticut than I’ve taken in the 22 years I’ve been driving this corridor, and that seems to be saving me some time. I can adjust routine!

Even heading back home it can trim a 3:30 ride to 3:08 (as you see in that picture), just by taking me a way that avoids the little bottlenecks that add time to the trip.

Some technology I’ll buy into immediately.

Some things I admit I wait on a little too long.

But in this case - ironically for something that can play a role in keeping me from being late - it’s better late than never.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

“Wrecking Ball” - Bruce Springsteen
“Teenage Dream” - Katy Perry
“Culture” - Migos
“What We Saw from the Cheap Seats” - Regina Spektor
Boondocks Saints
Facing Nolan
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Enola Holmes 2

Highly recommend the Enola Holmes movies on Netflix. The first was great. Second might have been even better.

Notes

*One week from today is the half marathon! I honestly don’t know how ready I am. I think it’s a somewhat challenging course. I’m not looking to set a personal best…just looking for an enjoyable run with my friend Kevin and then shifting my attention to a more disciplined marathon training after that.

*November really came quick. I don’t know if it’s because of the Jets every Sunday that maybe makes the week feel shorter or what, but every week it’s suddenly Thursday and I’m like, “What happened?”

*Hey, did you set your clocks back? Just a little PSA from your pal John.

*The social media links are below. I’ll write about the half marathon in the coming weeks…but you can definitely get information about it sooner through the running Instagram below.