On missing your exit

A totally random post:

Yesterday I hosted an all-day group offsite for the local Engineering team and visitors from India at the local wild animal park (Safari West). Why choose this place? We had had a small group meeting there before and it’s an awesome place with a great conference room (the Elephant Room) and an inspiring environment. The last few weeks have been totally exhausting with company offsites, european travel, marathon, and more offsites this week – while going to sleep past midnight and a number of mornings up at 4 or 5am and fighting jet-lag.

I say this to explain what happened last night.

I was driving home last night and I really wanted to get home. I was tired, consumed with the results from the day and some of the things said and done, and oh – I had a full bladder that needed emptying … So I’m driving south on the 101 freeway and thinking, listening to music and wishing that my off-ramp would come quickly so I could get off the freeway and be done with driving. Coming south to Petaluma, my brain kind of knows when it comes down the Cotati grade that my offramp is next. I remember driving through Rohnert Park and then when I “wake up” I had not only passed my offramp, but was just passing the last Petaluma offramp (Petaluma Blvd South) – three exits down and about 5 miles past where I wanted to be!

To make things WORSE, after this last Petaluma offramp, is nothing but 11 miles of freeway, all the way to Novato, no place to really turn around or get off! I’m just fuming and cursing while driving this stretch and kind of scared how I could be so all consumed with thoughts that I missed the freeway signs, offramp signs and other indicators that I should be getting off the freeway at a place where I have done 100s of times before.

And … once I get off at the first Novato offramp, I’m then heading NORTH on the 101, along with thousands of other commuters who normally commute north from the city to cities like Santa Rosa (or Rohnert Park).

Having sometimes coming close to missing my offramp, but never missing it by so much says a lot about the thought process and how one can be so distracted by the brain that they are not even close to being aware of what is going on. Needless to say, I eventually made it home and to the toilet, but jeez, I’m going to need to concentrate on what I’m doing at the time and stay focused on task-at-hand!