Driving to Annapolis, the GPS and I formed a tentative friendship. One in which I expect it to tell me what I want to hear. As we started out, the GPS cheerfully informed me that my trip would take three and a half hours. The countdown began as I backed out of my driveway. All went well for the first half of the trip. Then I entered the Bermuda Triangle, aka 495 Beltway around DC. My GPS said I had about one and a half hours left to my trip.
Thirty miles later, my GPS still steadily showed, "1:31" as time remaining. This continued for the next two or three hours, maybe more. How does this happen? And don't tell me traffic. Too obvious. I have a theory. First, let me explain. My friends on NPR had a segment on people who are perpetually late. One possible reason proposed included the idea that such people are, at heart, optimists. They know they need to pack for a trip, for example, and optimistically think that it will take ten minutes even when multiple previous experiences tells them that it will take twenty. Such optimistic thinking multiplies throughout their day, and invariably they are late. How does this relate to my GPS? Since my trip that felt like a route on a limit curve, always getting closer but never quite arriving at the axis, I have noticed this phenomenon on other trips. "Sure," you say, "what do you expect around the beltway?" However, what about trips where I don't encounter traffic? What about the trip with an ETA of 1 pm and it gets downgraded to 1:30 pm as a make my way down the highway? I can only explain such phenomenon by personifying my GPS which optimistically believes that my journeys are going to somehow include flight. Despite evidence to the contrary, I continue to optimistically trust that objects on the screen are indeed closer than they appear.
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