By Ross Engel –
Growing up in the greater Chicagoland area, one didn’t measure distance by miles. Distance was always measured in the amount of time it took to get somewhere. For example, when my wife and I were dating, I never would have said, “We live about 70 miles away from each other.” Instead, I would’ve said something like, “We live an hour away from each other.” Traffic and road types were always factored into the amount of time it took to get somewhere, since ten miles on one road might go by faster than five miles on another.