I get ideas driving in snow storms

Monday, March 30, 2009 by Dave Winer.

Ideas come when you upset your routine. Your brain, now accustomed to dealing with new places, people, cities, concepts, tries to find the patterns that are familiar, fails to find them, copes anyway, and thus activates your creativity. Once relaxed, that newly stimulated creativity is available for other tasks. 

For example -- this morning I left my hotel at 5AM to make a 7AM flight at SLC, to find it had snowed about a foot overnight and my rental car was covered with a huge amount of the stuff. So I wiped off as much as I could with my hands, trying to use the sleeve of my ski jacket as much as possible, but in the process my hands got incredibly cold. Too lazy to dig the gloves out of my ski bag, stuffed with all kinds of stufffff. Now I could see, so I skidded the car across the very wide street to a gas station to fill up, where I used their squeegee to wipe off the remaining snow. Filled up the tank, and drove a few blocks to get on I-80W to the airport. As I was getting on the freeway I realized I didn't have headlights. But I'm now in the middle of a huge cloverleaf, there's no place to pull over, so I decide to risk it, the airport is just a few exits down the highway. As I'm driving I realize now I have a little bit of headlights. Weird! Then a little more and then more, and then finally I realize what happened. When I knocked the snow off, they covered the headlights. This car, a Mercury Marquis, wasn't designed for snow?  

Anyway it's been a long time since I had a snow driving adventure. I'm sure this will give me some ideas -- what they are -- don't know yet.