Thursday, April 29, 2010

Slightly Obsessive Driving


In February of 2009, as a mental activity, I decided to take a different route each day of the week when dropping my kids off at my in-laws before I go to work. After a couple weeks I decided to figure out how many routes there actually were between my house (A) and my in-laws house (B). Then I decided to drive each of those routes. To keep it still a mental activity I kept no record of which routes I had taken, but systematically drove each path. In any case where I was not sure that I had driven a route, I drove it, possibly for a second time. It took me 13 months, but at the beginning of the month of April I drove the last possible route that does not involve backtracking (except in the case of roads that curve). The sketch above is not drawn to scale, but does demonstrate all 258 different routes.