JEREMY CORBETT
JEREMY TAKES THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED, TO THE HORROR OF HIS GIRLS!
As a species, us Aucklanders don’t learn particularly quickly. Every long weekend we drive out of the city en masse at roughly the same time, enjoy a few days getting away from it all in the company of every single other Aucklander, then return en masse at roughly the same time.
It happens Every. Single. Time. And yet, we are surprised to find the traffic completely and utterly jammed for kilometre after kilometre. So it was when I found myself returning from a long weekend.
We were doing quite well. Heading home safely at the speed limit. There was a steady stream of cars but we were making good progress, and then the inevitable happened − we came to a grinding halt some 60km from home. Being an Aucklander I was surprised. A traffic jam?!
Two hundred metres in front of us a car peeled away from the automotive cluster and headed off on a side road. Another car soon took the brave step and followed.
The vast majority of motorists dutifully stayed in the queue, but the seed had been sown. When we inched up to the intersection, I too turned onto the side road.
Google maps did a quick recalculation and told me I’d gone from an expected 1 hour and 20 minute trip to 50 minutes!
I was elated. My back road detour was saving us 30 minutes. We were beating those mugs stuck on the main route. I cheered. My wife cheered. Who doesn’t love a win like that? My kids, apparently.
They have grown up with traffic jams being the norm, they do not find them frustrating and annoying. They find them comforting, natural and soothing − a reminder that they are part of a large contingent of happy holidaying humans.
I thoroughly enjoyed driving through scenic, curving, rural
New Zealand. My children were horrified. They expressed concern we were somehow breaking an unwritten law, they were scared we would be punished for challenging the gods of gridlock.
They were terrified that no road but the main one would get them safely home.
They wanted to be back on the motorway where we belonged.
I explained we were travelling faster than anyone on State Highway One and we would arrive home sooner than them. My daughters looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Why would you want to travel faster and get home sooner if it meant deviating from the accepted route? Everyone was taking it, surely it was the correct option?
Thanks to my detour we arrived home considerably earlier than we would have. I got a high five from my wife, but only disdain from my kids.
Their reaction made me consider something... Perhaps all the energy being invested into trying to solve our traffic woes may be wasted, because it’s quite possible there’s an emerging generation that doesn’t see an issue.
It goes against years of ingrained attitude to say this, but I suspect our children love traffic.