When Fastest Is Not Always The Best Route

Early in the summer, I heard Andrew McCarthy speak about his latest book, Who Needs Friends, at Little City Books in Hoboken. The book centers around a road trip he took. It was that conversation that inspired me to take one of my own, which is what I did in August. I rented a Chevy Trax and headed north to Cape Cod to visit my cousin.

Google Maps gave me three options for directions, with the fastest at the top of the list.

But fastest was not my goal.

This was not about getting from point A to B the quickest. This was a road trip. A road trip is an adventure, and an adventure is not about speed. It is about having fun as soon as you start, in this case, when I got in the car.

The choice between speed and fun.

One of the selling points of AI is that it can save time. If I were to ask AI to write this post for me, it would take less time. It would also be less fun for me. And no doubt less interesting to you. Maybe even a bit boring.

As a writer, the fun for me is in the process, even when the process is frustrating, and I am staring at a blank page, wondering if a complete sentence will ever emerge. The end goal is not how fast I get the words down, but how good they are. And hopefully how much sense they make to the reader.

Seth Rogen said it best. “If your instinct is to be a writer and you want to use AI, you’re not writing. Go do something else.” It’s about the process.

Slow and steady wins the race

I have spent the last two months at Spear Physical Therapy for a torn rotator cuff. As it’s been healing and I was starting to feel myself again, I kept asking my physical therapist when I could ditch the two and three-pound weights and graduate to a higher number, more in line with what I was doing pre-injury.

Stratton, who is young enough to be my son and wise beyond his years, gently reminded me that it is not about how heavy the weights I use are or how fast I do my exercises. It’s about the form. It’s about the process.

Fast is a choice.

There was a time when I was obsessed with learning how to make the perfect risotto. The process involved slowly cooking the rice, frequently stirring to release just enough starch to get the creamy texture necessary to be called risotto. The alternative was a prepackaged version from Trader Joe’s that I could heat up in a fraction of the time it would take to create the real thing.

Sometimes the Trader Joe’s option is all that’s needed. But the quality and the taste and the enjoyment it brings in taking the time to do it yourself do not compare.

In the end, the choice is ours.

As you might have guessed, I opted out of the fastest route to the Cape – with no regrets. I chose the most scenic and the most pleasant route on a spectacular late summer day, up the Hutchinson Parkway, connecting to the lush greenery of the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, towards my destination.

My decision gave me time to think, to be present, and more than once remember a time when the only map available was the paper one you got at a gas station that did not tell you which route was best or which one had the least traffic.

At one point, Siri interrupted my train of thought to suggest an alternative cutoff that would save me fifteen minutes. I ignored her. This trip was never about how fast I would get there or get home. It was about the process. It was about taking time to enjoy the journey. Every step of the way.