Tooling along the freeway at rush hour, with cars whooshing around him like jet-propelled lemmings, the home-bound commuter is 20.34 minutes from the carport when glunk!his engine expires. Or else sudden snow turns a mountain road to meringue, or the fuel gauge comes up E in the midst of the desert, 25 miles after that road sign,
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Compared to the driver's plight in such situations, Ulysses' voyage home was a pleasure cruise. "The life expectancy of a stranded driver walking on an expressway," said an official of Detroit's Automobile Manufacturers' Association last week, "is perhaps 30...