Years ago, my wife and I used to live in a province called North West. 

Although we shared several houses through several years in more or less the same area, the one I’m talking about now I’ll refer to as the One with the Long Road for the purposes of this piece. 

Without a vehicle, minibus taxis were one of the best ways to get around. 

It was easy enough to get one from the main road, but the catch was that the main road was approximately 7km away from the house. (According to Google, that’s a distance of 4.3496 miles.) 

I walked the road a few hundred times in the space of a year. 

It’s important to mention that the road was long, but not generally busy. If you saw a single car pass you by in an hour’s time, it was likely that they lived there.

The road taught me a lot of things, including how and when to hydrate if you don’t want heatstroke during one of the worst heat waves to this day. The same road also helped to teach me some of the most important bridge plays (and a few backgammon moves). 

How, exactly? 

It took a while to walk from one end of the road to the next. It took much longer with a full backpack. Bridge books became the go-to – and when I didn’t have a book with me, I’d refer to bridge websites to kill the time instead. 

As it turns out years later, this was the best thing I could have done at the time.

At the same time, I really cemented the habit of carrying a notebook and a card deck for coming up with ideas or quickly jotting down concepts. A lot of great ideas came from times where I had to sit down and smoke a cigarette because I couldn’t feel my legs – and yes, I can only admit this years after the fact.

What else did this teach? 

If you’re trying to better your bridge game (or trying to find the time for any new skill where time doesn’t seem to exist), there are many ways to use the spare moments you have to your advantage.

And like I said, hydration.