The Road to Anywhere

How we use technology to transform a routine drive to Wisconsin into a personal family game.

Photo by anja. on Unsplash

My parents met and fell in love Wisconsin, and there’s a little town just across the northern Illinois border that means a lot to them. I spent a lot of time there growing up, and over time, it became a place that means a lot to me, too. Now, I’m passing that tradition onto my children, who hoot and holler with the power of a thousand suns whenever we surprise them with “hey, we’re going to the lake this weekend.”

There aren’t a lot of ways to reach this place. Frankly, there are two options: one road or the other road. [INSERT THEY’RE THE SAME PICTURE MEME] There’s twists and turns to end up at the final destination, but the majority of the driving is along one road…or the other road. In the past, we’ve used traffic jams to determine which one, or flipped a quarter. But having done this drive literally hundreds of times over my lifetime, it doesn’t matter. The drive is the drive, give or take a few extra minutes. 

Consequently, we don’t need directions. But one time, we flipped them on because my oldest wanted to see how close we were, and we discovered something neat: in the pursuit of saving a minute or two, the directions would sometimes—but not always—take a new route. Out of nowhere, we’d be asked to take a left or right down a road I’ve passed by dozens and dozens of times, but never once thought was a potential route.

I’d spent a lifetime whizzing past communities that were, at best, wallpaper.

Now, I had a chance to take them in.