Ryan's Journal

To those living in cities I've been in recently and did not contact, sorry for not telling you I was in your part of the world. I promise I won't be offended if you do the same to me now and again. Next time.

Having driven about 100 miles per day for the past four days, I now know the Scarborough and North York area roads better than my home town (which has changed a good deal, not because I don't remember it). You Toronto drivers are lucky: good city planning and long local roads make things easy to find, your roads are constantly empty, there don't appear to be any patrolmen watching for speeding, and you can easily drive at 120kph on the freeway. Sure, that's only 75mph, but it sounds much, much cooler in metric. On the downside, Mapquest seems a bit anti-Canada; I ended up half an hour away from where I was supposed to be following the vile directions Mapquest suggested.

Also, the Ford Fusion is not bad for a Ford. Not that I'll consider it when I buy a car. But it's pleasantly responsive - perhaps because amongst the last vehicles I've driven were a minivan and a 15 passenger van.

I'm starting to feel Volkswagen's old motto about people being either drivers or passengers ("Drivers wanted"). Constantly driving people around, you yourself can run into conflict with your passengers and (quickly) learn best how to relate to them, or you can find yourself in the role of a mediator as they conflict with each other, all towards the purpose of making sure that, at the end of the day, those in your care end up where they need to be - sometimes by keeping them out of your emotional touchpoints, sometimes by keeping them out of each others' so you can drive safely. Your passengers may change, but your duty as a driver doesn't.

Yes, you're right, I clearly haven't driven enough if I think your daily carpool commute through downtown has such ramifications. I walk to work.

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