Here comes the science

Marginal Revolution has a post on one of those "everyone recognizes it" phenomena:

The finding backs the idea that distances elongate in our minds because, over time, we begin to notice more and more minutiae about a route, an idea called the feature-accumulation theory. "As detail accumulates, the distance seems to get bigger," Crompton says.

Here is the full story. Remember the earlier result that if you are going and returning only once, the ride back seems shorter. Furthermore life speeds up as you get older.

Cool. I'd often wondered why the return journey seemed shorter, yet logically couldn't be.