I’m taking a break from the studio for a couple months. Some tough stuff happened in 2016 so I booked a trip to Portugal when my partner was feeling the gravity of grief and estate administration. We already cancelled a similar trip a few years ago because of something similar and we needed something to look forward to.

We decided to drive across the country to catch our flight. A cross-country road trip in deadeye prairie winter: why not? Canada is astounding, especially with winter tires and a dog who loves snow in a country that does the “we’re all in this cold together” thing better than a House Stark fandom clique.

I heard an interesting podcast on BBC’s “The Why Factor” about the perception of time and why it seems to go slower or faster at certain points in life. The podcast described a series of experiments and concluded that our sense of time is relative to the repetitiousness of our experience: when new stuff happens, time seems to slow down because our brains need to process all the details but when we do the same old, same old, our brains go, “Been there, done that, skip the processing.” Time zooms by unchecked if there are no memory markers added along the way.

Guess that explains social media and disproves the corollary of “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

So our goal is not to have fun. Our goal is to be in a constant state of edgy uncertainty about where we’re going and what we’ll find. I’ve never driven across Canada. I’ve also never rented a car in Portugal, either, but Road Trip philosophy is that you never know what’s going to happen until it does.

Bet a lot of folks are feeling like that these days.