It was a mile to the restaurant. I figured we’d walk. How hard could walking in a blizzard really be? I had never been in a blizzard. Snow, to me, was Atlanta snow. Half an inch and the city closes for two days. We couldn’t see ten feet. My wife and I each went down two or three times on ice hiding under fresh powder. A plow came by and threw a wall of snow on us. If I had asked a local before we left, he would have laughed and said sure, walk it. And he would have been right. About himself. Twenty winters. The right boots. I, being smart, had on tennis shoes. He reads ice without knowing he’s reading it. I was doing unintentional moonwalks on it. He would have given me an honest answer, and I still would have ended up on my backside in the road. Expert trauma surgeons were once asked to describe a procedure step by step so it could be taught. The ones working from memory left out nearly 70% of the decisions the procedure requires. They weren’t holding back. Do something enough times and the decisions go underground where you can’t get at them. That is what you’re getting when you ask an expert for advice. The 30% he can still see. The 70% is what keeps you from falling face-first, and most of it is what he adapted to so long ago that he forgot he adapted. He can’t tell you what you’re missing. He doesn’t know he has it. Being great at something isn’t the same skill as teaching it. So “Can I do this?” gets you an answer from a man who no longer remembers what the first time felt like, or what he got wrong. His answer still beat my guess. I just needed to ask it differently. What did you have going in that I don’t? Boots, capital, a bench, the right tools for the job. How many times have you done this, and how fast did you find out when you were wrong? Gut instinct only earns trust in a setting regular enough to have real patterns, learned through repetition with fast, clear feedback. One win in one market in one rate cycle could be luck confused for skill. None of that makes the walk free. I call it stupid tax. The price of learning something by doing it wrong once. You pay it on anything new, and the bill isn’t optional. The size is. Mine came to wet shoes and a few falls. Cheap. Not every decision prices it that kindly. The pancakes were great, by the way. Which told me nothing about whether walking was a good idea.