I had one simple goal: make it across the US.  What struck me is that even the simplest goals can be muddied down by other goals.  Like driving as fast as humanly possible.  This is the story of two people with similar goals ... and how one made it while the other did not.

In this episode, I talk about:

* Driving in the desert

* The lead foot from nowhere

* Achieving (or not achieving) your goals.

Transcript:

Hey Everyone! Did you miss me? This is a path to 1 million episode, 183. I made it to Michigan and I think I slept probably collectively about 20 hours. What a drive! You know, it's interesting. I'm, I'm was just leaving the LA area out in California and when you get out there and you're on the 10 and you're headed East, there is literally nothing for miles. Literally nothing for miles. There's no billboards. There's no power cables. There's no, there's nothere's no cell towers. There's nothing, there's no exits, there's no McDonald's. There's nothing like literally like it is the, and I know it sounds ironic when you talk about in terms of describing the desert, but it literally is glacial. Once you get out there, there's like nothing and it's great to absolutely clear your mind. There's nothing going on out there. It's just, it's just, it's just expansive and it's almost like a, like a reprieve almost for your mind.

And I was sitting there and I was driving down the, I was driving on the freeway. And typically when I'm driving, I'm very aware of the fact that there are police officers out there who would love to give you a ticket for speeding, which I'm not one of those people. I set my cruise control usually within five miles an hour of the speed limit. No more. So you know, I'm, I'm going on a freeway. The speed limit was, you know, let's say 70 miles an hour. My cruise control is set at 73, and as I'm going down the, the right lane on the, on this on this freeway, I'd come across this semi and this semi is going like maybe 65 or something. So anyways, I put them, I look at my rear view mirror. There's nobody behind me. I put on my left blinker, merge over into that lane as and as I'm in that lane and I'm getting up beside of him, now all of a sudden it occurs to me that, you know, something's different.

Something has changed and I glance up in my rear view mirror and all I see are two headlights and the grill of this giant four by four truck, right. Guy came out of nowhere, did not see him and he just barreled right up behind me. I mean he was literally like maybe within one or two feet from my bumper. And if I had to hit the brakes for any reason or another, this guy would've been sitting in my back seat. And I was like really annoyed, really irritated about it. But you know, there's nothing I can do. Obviously he feels the need to speed. So at some point I make it past the truck and as I get past the truck, I moved merge back over and into the right hand lane and this four by four truck just blast right on by, you know, you could hear his engine screaming and stuff.

And as he goes by, one of the things that I noticed was something that just caught my eye was like the circular yellow sticker that was on the back of his cap. And you know, and I was thinking, I was driving down the road and I was thinking of different topics, just letting my mind wander and it started getting me thinking about the, about goals and about objectives that you set for yourself. And a lot of times it's super easy to set a goal for yourself and then you start that goal with like kind of like what I will call side objectives. So for instance, my goal was to just make it across the U S as safely as possible, right? This other guy, his goal obviously was to get wherever he was going and do it as fast as possible. Right? It was just put his foot through the floor.