RE: It's Back! Fortune Cookie Fortune
I hate detours - so I'm taking shortcuts as often as I can, particularly when walking or biking - and as a pedestrian, the shortcuts can really make sense. Even with the boat I'm finding myself doing more and more shortcuts. To me, "shortcut" is a positively charged word. Adding to that, on side roads there are usually much more to see and experience than on the main road ... and the air is definitively fresher along forest trails than on the highway.
Although map and GPS technology has come really far, I still find myself a bit like in your granddads situation quite often. When walking, there are still times when one looks at the map and just considers "of course, it must be possible to get from that place and over there, I'll save myself from a 300 metres detour by going there". Usually one really saves a lot of walking that way - but every now and then one ends up having to go through private gardens, go back the same way one came, or have to get through some dense forest. The signs are almost always designed for the car drivers, like, I believe a great majority of the stub-signs here in Norway are either due to regulations stopping motor drivers to continue, a gate designed to stop car drivers from driving there, or the road stops but it's possible to continue along a path through the forest. Every now and then, one ends up on a real stub - and that's bad, particularly when one is walking and have to walk all the way back again.
Of course, countless of times I've ended up having to walk or carry my bike through the forest, countless of times I've ended up wasting twice as much time trying out a new "shortcut" as what I would have done following the suggestions from Google Maps.
One particular case; I joined a group of mothers going for a walk with prams and babies in the forest, along the forest roads. We came to a cross road, we realized we had gone the wrong way (and I guess that was partly my fault). Instead of going back to the previous cross road, we decided to take a "shortcut". I guess I was partially responsible for that decision. The trail looked perfectly OK from the cross road, we could continue with our prams without problems ... but of course, the longer we got on that road, the worse it got, and in the end we ended up having to carry the prams most of the way. I don't remember the details ... but probably I could have done that "shortcut" in 15 minutes without a pram, and we probably spent something like 1.5 hours on that "shortcut". In retro-perspective, we should of course have turned around and gone back as the trail got worse.
There's been quite a few people in the comments pointing out shortcuts as a positive thing when it comes to slow moving traffic or traffic jams. I guess those could be considered shortcuts, but I've always thought of them as alternative routes that I only use when there's too much traffic. Otherwise, the way I'm going is faster, and thus the shortest route (timewise).
You like taking the road less traveled, and I agree, in many cases, there's much more to see and it can be very healthy. I don't know if they're shortcuts if they're taking longer. Which I think is what I learned from the story about my Grandpa. Shortcuts aren't really shortcuts if they don't save time.
So, I'm not familiar with the word pram, but I looked it up and you must be referring to a baby stroller, since there were small children with you and their mothers. I can see where that would make everything much more time consuming.
We just recently made a trip to a mountain where we did some hiking. None of us had ever been there before and it seemed like a long drive out there. The drive back, however, didn't seem nearly as long, even though it was the same distance and took more or less the same amount of time. So, perception and attitude play a part in all of this, too. I don't think if I were going by myself the trip would have seemed so long, even if it were. :)
I see a major typo snuck into my comment: I wrote "driving" instead of "biking". To me, "shortcuts" is a word that makes much more sense when biking or walking than when driving. Usually, when driving, following the biggest highways is the fastest - though, for local transportation it can often be at least fuel-saving to go the shortest route rather than first drive to the high way and then off the high way. When walking, the shortest route is often - but not always - the faster route.
Regarding avoiding slow-moving traffic, yes, I would typically call those routes "alternative routes" rather than "shortcuts". To me, shortcuts is about saving distance. Quite often it's undesirable that there is a lot of traffic on smaller roads, here in Oslo it's quite typical that there are roadblocks every here and there preventing cars from taking "alternative routes" through residential areas.
And yes, often roads tend to feel much longer the first time one rides them. Sometimes it goes faster as well, less stops to read the map, one goes faster, takes the right choices in every crossroad without thinking, knows what shortcuts are worth taking and which ones aren't.
When sailing, a short cut may go through narrow straights or shallow channels, and it's not always clear from the sea maps if it is possible or not to travel there with a sail boat. Earlier I would always chose the "safe" detour, now I'm increasingly taking chances.
I guess it truly depends on what we're talking about with regards to shortcuts. I can see where walking or biking could provide all kinds of shortcuts that driving would not allow. I suppose if fuel economy is the desired outcome taking a shorter route that takes longer because of winding turns would be appropriate, especially if it helps to extend the fuel long enough to make it to the final destination.
I think it's all impatience on the part of my family. Instead of enjoying the trip, they only want to get to where we're going, even though there's plenty of scenery to see along the way. Of course, it's hard to reason with a one-year-old, so if she's fussing, everyone else gets in a hurry. :)
I try to avoid situations of uncertainty as much as I can. I like to know where I'm going, know how long it's going to take, where there might be places to stop if necessary, etc. But I do take a few more risks when I'm by myself than I do when I'm with others, simply because I feel I can deal with whatever might happen. Some of that might still be foolhardy on my part, but taking some risk, calculated risk, is a part of life.
On a similar note, some people plan their vacation in details long time before they go at vacation. At the other hand, I'm usually not planning much, throwing myself into the unknown, sometimes letting the wind decide where we're going and how far ... though, I remember my wife found it a bit stressful when we were in China with a child and didn't book any hotels in advance.