# Three turnings on the way there, and never taken

> A road map with one heavy route from home to theirs through six junctions, and three shorter branches that go nowhere because nobody ever uses them.

August 21, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-route-you-drive-every-time

One heavy line, from a square marked HOME to a square marked THEIRS, through six dotted junctions.

At three of those junctions, a lighter branch peels off and stops. Nowhere. No other text on the map.

The route isn't the shortest way there. It's the one that got learned once and never questioned again.

## Why does the map only label the two ends and nothing in between?

Because the two ends are the only two points on this route that were ever chosen on purpose.

Everything between HOME and THEIRS was decided once, early, and then just repeated until deciding
stopped being part of it. The junctions, the turns, the stretch where the road narrows — none of
that gets a label because none of it gets thought about any more. Only the start and the
destination were ever actual decisions, so only the start and the destination get names. It's the
same route [a ring on the same weekday marks as expected](/stories/the-same-day-every-week)
before it's even been driven — one drawn on a calendar, the other worn into a road.

## Why isn't this the shortest route between the two points?

Because the route wasn't optimised. It was learned once, under whatever conditions applied that
day, and it stuck.

A road that was faster at the time, or familiar, or simply the one somebody else drove first,
becomes the road, regardless of what a map might later suggest instead. Changing it would save a
few minutes and cost something else — the drive would stop being automatic, which is most of what
makes it easy. The same trade shows up in [what gets carried in on the way there](/stories/what-you-take-when-you-visit):
the version that's slightly less efficient, repeated until efficiency stops being the metric that
matters.

## What are the three branches that go nowhere?

Roads that exist on the ground and simply never get driven, because the decision to take the other
one was made a long time before those three turnings came up again.

They're not shortcuts that got tried and rejected — most of them were probably never tried at all.
A route memorised at this level doesn't get re-evaluated at every junction. It runs on the first
choice made and repeated, and the branches are just the other options that were available and
never taken up.

## Whose permission do you need to print a route like this?

Nobody's — there's no real road name, no postcode and no identifiable place on the map, just a
line, two labelled squares and three dead ends.

A schematic built this plain doesn't point to an actual address. If a real map with a real
location on it were the plan instead, that's a different job, and one worth checking with whoever
lives at the destination before it goes on a shirt anybody else can see.

## Does this work for a route that isn't driven?

Yes — the mechanism is the same for a walk, a train line with one interchange, or a flight with a
layover that's never once been swapped for a faster connection.

What the design needs is a route learned once and repeated exactly, with visible alternatives that
never get used. A driven road just happens to make that easiest to draw, with a heavy line for the
route taken and lighter branches for everything else on the map that could have worked and didn't
get the chance.

## Doesn't a map with no scale on it stop being useful as a map?

As navigation, yes. As a record of a habit, the missing scale is the whole reason it works.

A map with distances on it invites comparison — this junction is faster, that branch shaves two
minutes. Stripping the scale out removes the argument entirely and leaves only the shape of the
decision: one route, memorised, and three roads that were never in contention. It isn't meant to
get anyone from A to B. It's already been driven, right up to [the point where the car finally
pulls away and somebody watches it go](/stories/the-goodbye-at-the-gate).

## Does it print well?

Yes — a single heavy line against lighter dead-end branches is high-contrast, hard-edged linework,
exactly what a screen print wants at chest size.

Two weights of one ink line and two small filled squares for the endpoints is enough. Keep the
dotted junctions genuinely dotted rather than smoothing them into the route — the join at each one
is part of what reads as "a real road," and a continuous unbroken line would flatten that into an
abstract diagram instead of a map that used to mean something.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the route at [JustOG](/) — how many turnings, which ones never get taken, what the two
ends should be labelled. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real
garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

The three branches are still there on the ground, waiting for a turn that isn't coming.