For the last hour, on a drive made at least that much longer by bad traffic, the roads on the GPS have been snaking by like spaghetti sliding off a plate. The overwhelming tangle of afterthought overpasses and tollbooths that seem like such a antiquated process at this point, funnel and condense the traffic over and over again. A great thing about living way out in the sticks where we do are all the small roads leading to small airports and of course the lack of traffic. But leaving from JFK is actually working out in a way, at least as it’s gearing me up to deal with volume, scale, and confusion in my travels. A skill I suspect I might need refined as I drop into a very non touristy area of a country that feels the most foreign yet of the dozen or so I’ve traveled to over the past few years.