Don't get me wrong though, i'm still deep within the maze shrouded in fog.
Okay, anyway, the reason why i'm posting again after just an hour or so is because i was taking a shower earlier when i realised that i made a mistake in my analogy recently (my "On the expressway..." post). So scrap all that; i'm making a correction to it here in order to clarify my position. Well, actually i'm hoping that it ends up confusing most of you instead...hahaha! XD
Anyway, the situation is this. Deep inside the maze, there are several pit stops. These are points within the maze that you HAVE to locate AND visit in a certain order before you are allowed access to the parking lot at your final destination. Each visit allows you to refuel your car engine, but you can only visit each pit stop once, so fuel is in limited supply.
So the difficulty arises because the route heading towards the final destination can be long or short, depending on the general difficulty of the maze that you're in, pure arse-luck and the results of certain 50/50 decisions. You can choose not to visit the pit stops when you discover them, and only visit them in the required order when you're in need of refueling.
You might discover the location of the final destination after only refueling from the first few pit stops, and that would be to your advantage. Some people might even decide to carefully plan out the route to their final destination, and make sure that they're certain of their directions before visiting whatever pit stops remain. That's probably what i had wanted to do before i took the chance and drove past the final traffic light.
But, well, i've been wandering around the maze in my trusty red car recently, and i've been discovering quite a few pit stops along the way. Lucky me, in a sense. Maybe i should have decided to go and scout ahead first before visiting the pit stops only when i was low on fuel. But instead, i haven't been controlling myself; i've visited each and every one of those pit stops even though i didn't have any need to refuel.
So now, i'm a little worried that i don't have sufficient fuel to last the entire distance. I might run out of fuel before i even find the location of my final destination. And if i run out of fuel, i'll also be hauled back to the starting line, regardless of how close i was to reaching my final destination. Parking along the roadside within the maze (meaning in a non-parking lot) to save fuel is also strictly prohibited.
I can still make it with the number of pit stops that i have remaining, and it's actually quite a good thing that i'm locating the pit stops, because it means that i'm somewhat on the right track. But it would require some luck on my part to find my final destination with low fuel resources, because it would have meant that my time spent travelling in the maze was short. And who knows if that would really be the case for me.
So i've decided to focus a little more on the long term. Be a little more safe in planning my travels. A while ago, i spotted what seemed like a pit stop in the distance, but instead of heading towards it, i decided to mark out the location of the pit stop on the map (which is mostly all hand-drawn, btw). I'll head to that pit stop later; for now, i still have quite a bit of fuel left in my engine, so i'll go spend some of it wandering elsewhere and fashioning an image of the maze on my map (and hopefully finding my final destination in the process).
Hope that either clears things up or confuses everyone even more. No change in particular just means that i've wasted my time. Sigh. Anyway, it's late. I've gotta sleep sufficiently tonight because tomorrow is test day. So goodnight to all. Whatever happens, getting to the final destination is still all that matters.
