And You Get There in a Car
I've always been amazed when watching the Discovery Channel to see members of various indigenous populations ascertaining from something as seemingly innocuous as a broken tree branch that a wild boar has been by here in the last hour, or some such useful piece of information. Amazed by this insight, I marveled at the way indigenous groups, unspoiled by Civilization, were so in tune with their environment. Now, having returned to Houston after essentially five years of absence, I realize that I too was in tune with important aspects of my environment, and those skills have now deteriorated with years of disuse. What skills, exactly? What part of my environment could I judge quickly and accurately based on tiny observations? Traffic.
I used to know all the handy back routes and was able to look at a particular piece of roadway or even just at the clock and accurately judge the fastest and least inconvenient way to reach my destination. I was intimately familiar with traffic's ebbs and flows in my own little section of the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area and I always knew where the freeway construction was and how much additional time I could expect it to take.
After five years of walking and public transportation, traffic examination is no longer second nature. Often I don't even think about traffic, even at a time I know is rush hour, and am surprised to see so many cars impeding my path. And when I do try to plan for the traffic, I find that I no longer know which lanes I need to be in where and cannot choose between the freeway and the feeder and the backroads. I feel like a bumbling European explorer in the deepest darks of Africa, except that I've been here before and really should, and used to, know better. And by the time I get my traffic sense back again I will be heading back to DC, where all I really need to know is where Metro is doing track maintenance and where to stand on each platform for the best chance of getting a seat on the ride home.
I used to know all the handy back routes and was able to look at a particular piece of roadway or even just at the clock and accurately judge the fastest and least inconvenient way to reach my destination. I was intimately familiar with traffic's ebbs and flows in my own little section of the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area and I always knew where the freeway construction was and how much additional time I could expect it to take.
After five years of walking and public transportation, traffic examination is no longer second nature. Often I don't even think about traffic, even at a time I know is rush hour, and am surprised to see so many cars impeding my path. And when I do try to plan for the traffic, I find that I no longer know which lanes I need to be in where and cannot choose between the freeway and the feeder and the backroads. I feel like a bumbling European explorer in the deepest darks of Africa, except that I've been here before and really should, and used to, know better. And by the time I get my traffic sense back again I will be heading back to DC, where all I really need to know is where Metro is doing track maintenance and where to stand on each platform for the best chance of getting a seat on the ride home.