Something that I thought was common knowledge was that country roads are laid out on a grid. A mile by mile grid. I thought everyone would just know this. And then I showed up to my first city I was living in and I was going on some runs with people on country roads, and they all had these GPS watches that told them how fast we were going and I did not use one. And my high school coach was old school running, so he had been really like — taught me the tips and tricks. Like I knew how to recognize the survey markers that were half a mile apart in the middle of the road, and how to look at the county roads and measure off them and then just kind of go by feel and figure it out. And you could just guess your mileage and be pretty close and it’s what people had done for decades.
But I was with — running with people who no one had ever talked to them about that, and they had always had their watches, I think. And then somehow, everyone’s watched died all on the same run and they were like, “Oh my God, how are we gonna know?” And I was like, “Well, we’ve run this far, and then if we like, go this way and then this way and then this way, it’ll be the right number ’cause of how the miles work.” And they all thought I had lost it. They were like, “There’s no way. You’re crazy.” And I was like, “I’m not kidding! This is like — that’s just how roads work, what are you talking about?!” And then, in fact, we went my way and it was exactly the mileage we need when they like, got back home and looked it up on their maps. And to this day, they still think I am just like, the mastermind of mileage. Which I am not, but they think that.