Letter From America: Come, Fly With Me
Those Google journey-planner details can be a trifle optimistic, as Ronnie Bray reveals.
Taking the M62 and M61 Motorways from Huddersfield to the Preston Temple is a road distance of forty-six miles that Google journey planner says can be travelled in fifty-one minutes provided that all traffic lights are green, there are no lane restrictions, no accidents, no roadworks, and no other delays on the motorways or connecting roads.
However, it has never been my good fortune either by day or by night to traverse that route without some significant slowing of traffic or some more than minor delays, even when the sole cause has been the volume of vehicular traffic that makes normal progress on all sections of the journey impossible.
Most that have undertaken that identical journey have had correspond experiences with the time element and will attest that Google Maps’ sanguine fifty-one minutes is more often that not drawn out to around ninety minutes.
That common circumstance explains the laughter at what, in tone and expectation, was meant to be a serious but not sombre occasion, when the speaker, whose blushes I spare by invoking the shield of anonymity, encouraged Latter-day Saints to attend the Temple a little more frequently, adding by way of reinforcement, "It’s only a forty minute drive!"
I had ridden with the speaker on many occasions and adjudged him a safe and responsible driver that obeyed the Highway Code and other legal and sapiential conventions constituted to make Britain’s roads safe for all classes of users. I had never known him exceed the speed limit or take risks.
His estimate of "forty minutes" was not lost on the congregation who immediately broke through the reverence ceiling of that august gathering to register its recognition that he spoke the truth with a barrage of irreverent laughter.
With grace and good humour, the speaker amended his estimate to something closer to the driving speeds imposed on all the roads over which that pilgrimage must be taken, at which point, order was restored, and the meeting continued as intended.
Copyright © 2010 – Ronnie Bray
All Rights Reserved
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