Field note · 3 April 2026
How to read a kilometre log before anyone draws a map
A log is a stack of numbers. The useful questions are which gaps are waits, which are hills, and which are simply a missing street name.
Bring a kilometre log to Level 6, 39 Marjanishvili Street, Tbilisi 0102 and the first thing we do is not draw. We look for three kinds of silence.
Silence between doors. A jump of eight kilometres inside Tbilisi at 10 a.m. may be a forgotten drop in Isani, or it may be a driver buying bread. The log will not say. A waybill with times will. If your sheets have no times, an observed round is cheaper than arguing about bread.
Silence at a gate. Factory receiving on the Rustavi road often appears as a short distance and a long morning. The number of kilometres between the highway and the dock is small. The wait for a stamp is not. We pencil a box on the plate for that gate rather than smoothing it into “travel.”
Silence of nicknames. “Gia’s cellar” is not an address. It is a relationship. Until a dispatcher sits with us and unpacks the nickname onto a street, any map we draw will send a stranger to the wrong stair. That unpacking is honest work and it is billed as reading, not as cartographic flourish.
A useful sample week is ordinary. Do not send the week a van broke and a cousin covered. Send Tuesday through Saturday if Friday is the bazaar day, because Friday is when Tbilisi lies to a log that was tidy on Wednesday.
If the handwriting is faint, photocopy darker rather than retyping. Retyping introduces polite addresses the driver never uses. We would rather squint at the original ink.