"Road Trips and Space Warps" by Troy H. Cheek on Apr 05, 2005

You'd think that driving from Point A to Point B would take more or less the same amount of time as driving from Point B to Point A. That should be some kind of Natural Law of the Universe, much like the Law of Gravity or the Law of Every Network Having Commercial Breaks at the Same Time so Any Attempt to Skip Commercials by Channel Surfing just Results in Seeing Dozens of Disjointed Segments of Commercials.

I drove from my Small Home Town to a Distant Big City on business recently. Well, actually, it was pleasure. Our business is your pleasure. My pleasure is none of your business. Something like that.

I was an uneventful trip and I made it in about... Well, come to think of it, I'm not sure how long it took. I didn't keep track of it. What I did keep track of was the amount of time that it took to get from Nearby Big City to Distant Big City. You see, I had an appointment with a doctor in Nearby Big City and wanted to know what time I'd need to leave Distant Big City in order to make it. The time, incidentally, was almost exactly three hours. Since my appointment was at 3pm, I left Distant Big City at exactly 11:30am with an ETA of 2:30pm, figuring that a half hour was enough wiggle room in case I hit bad traffic or something.

I pulled into the parking lot at 1:30pm.

I made a three hour trip in two hours.

I used the clock in my truck for all the timings, so it's not like I could have been confused by crossing time zones or going through a county which doesn't use daylight savings time (not unheard of in this part of the country). And I didn't drive particularly slowly on the way out and particularly fast on the way back. I took exactly the same route. There were no detours or shortcuts or anything like that.

This used to happen to me fairly often many years ago. I'd arrive an hour earlier, almost always after a long trip of at least a couple of hours. Only once did I arrive earlier than I'd left. I usually just wrote it off to somebody being confused about time zones or whatnot. But this time I was very careful to note the times because I really didn't want to miss that appointment and have to reschedule.

I also remember having to climb up and then back down at least one more steep mountain road on the drive out than I encountered on the drive back.

Weird. I'm going to do my best not to lose sleep over it tonight. This is the sort of thing I wish I could cause to happen at will, because I could really use one of those million dollar prizes that James Randi keeps giving out.

Another time-related mystery was they keycard for my motel room. When I signed in, I was given a keycard. The next day, it stopped letting me into my room. If I read the little error lights properly, I was being told that it was expired. I took it back to the front desk.

"I signed in yesterday and I'm staying a couple more days, but the keycard stopped letting me into the room."

"Oh, probably whoever authorized it mistakenly told the computer you were just staying the one night."

"I believe that you're the one who signed me in, young man."

"Um, well, it's fixed now. And remember, if the door won't open, try pulling up on the handle instead of pushing down."

The newly re-authorized keycard worked, handle pushed up or pulled down. However, the next day, it stopped working again. Expired.

"This keycard stopped letting me into the room again."

"Oh, probably whoever authorized it mistakenly told the computer you were just staying the one night."

"I remind you that you're the one who authorized the card, young man."

"Um, well, it's fixed now. And remember, if the door won't open, try pulling up on the handle instead of pushing down."

The next day, the same thing. Expired.

"Are you pushing the handle down or pulling it up?"

"Young man, do you honestly think that whether or not I plan to later move the handle in the wrong direction will cause the cardreader to blink a red light and flash a message asking me to contact the front desk?"

He made a big production of authorizing the keycard for the rest of the month, even though I was leaving before the end of the week. The next day, I took a load of suitcases out to the truck and returned to get more.

Once again, my keycard wouldn't open the door to let me back in. Expired. Sigh.

In an unlrelated story, while out of town I ate lunch at a restaurant I'd never been to before. Actually, that's kind of hard not to do when you're eating out of town. I'm not going to mention the name because I don't want to send them any business if my experience was typical of their level of service, but likewise I don't want to badmouth them if it wasn't.

My date ordered a very specific combination of toppings on her burger. Normally, she just takes whatever the standard burger is, but our waitress had made it very clear that this restaurant only puts on what you tell them to put on. If she'd just ordered a burger, she was led to believe, her burger would consist solely of bun and beef patty.

I wasn't very hungry, so I just ordered a salad.

The waitress dropped our food off and then disappeared, as waitresses are wont to do. We flagged her down several minutes later. "Excuse me, Britney. My date here says her burger is completely lacking in the mayonaise that I clearly remember hearing her ask you for. Also, I don't remember ordering any burger for myself."

"Oh, I'm sorry. They must have made a mistake in the kitchen. I'll bring out some mayo. I'll make sure that you're not charged for the burger."

About the time my date finished nibbling her fries, the mayonaise arrived. By then, her burger was cold. My salad was a bit wilty. I found myself nibbling on my unordered burger (just bun and meat, as promised) out of boredom. I ended up eating it all, and as it was a pretty good sized burger and as I still mostly full from a large breakfast, I found myself stuffed with cold greasy meat.

And not in a good way.

After deciding against dessert, my date cut a trail while I attempted to pay the check. Nobody was at the register, and no employees working in the back or passing by seemed willing to help me. After several subjective hours of waiting, I was joined by a few other customers. We began speculating about whether it would be ethical to simply walk out, seeing as no one seemed interested in taking our money. I had already decided to do so and was debating with myself whether I should leave money on the counter or not when my waitress walked up and asked if she could help us.

"Yeah, we'd kind of like to pay our checks and leave?"

"Oh, we don't have a cashier right now. I'll have to go to the back and get one for you."

This caused my fellow customers to start muttering.

"What, do they keep them on a shelf in the back room?"

"Maybe the one they were using ran past her expiration date."

"I guess they'll have to open a new can of cashier."

I added "When she gets out here, we'll sniff her and see if she still has that new cashier smell."

I always seem to get just a tiny bit too weird for the room. On the bright side, everyone else had backed away so I was first in line when Britney returned with the key to the register. I guess she couldn't find a fresh can of cashier.

Please don't think poorly of me that I didn't tip.

Copyright 2005 by Troy H. Cheek. Reprint with prior written permission only. Comments and questions to