The Law of Dunkin' Donuts in New England

This past weekend, Arizona's lifelong BFF came for a visit. Now, I was a little nervous about this, as the one other time I had met BFF in person, Arizona and I were still very new to each other and only saw each other on weekends, and I was used to us hoarding that time together. So let's just say that I didn't share my toys as well as I could have. Fortunately, it's three years later, water under the bridge, and let's face it--women are far more prone to agonizing over things that didn't go quite right in the past. Guys are more like 'hey, what do you want to do for dinner?' So it's been a very fun visit, I get why these guys have been buds for a Very Long Time, and I've been enjoying their "remember when"s. 

Over the course of our putzing around our local environs, showing BFF the sights, eating way too much, and then burning off the eats with a bike ride, some cultural differences have come to light in comparing our little corner of Connecticut to points west (like, yanno, Arizona). To whit: the law of Dunkin' Donuts, which reads as follows:

In southern New England, one will never be more than ten minutes from a Dunkin' Donuts.

Now, this rule was very important to me during my horse showing days, because it meant that when we were on the road at some ungodly hour, headed somewhere based on directions that involved things like "turn at the big rock" and "the show grounds are just past where the landfill used to be," and caffeine and donuts were desperately required, we only needed to keep driving, and we would come to a Dunkin' Donuts. 

Granted, I would have to add my own creamer and sweetener, because I never had my "medium tea, milk and one sugar" come out the same twice, and most often it would have a layer of crunchy sugar sludge at the bottom (ew!). And there's a serious naming disconnect, in that what I think of as a chocolate donut is labeled "glazed chocolate" while the plain donut with chocolate icing is called a "chocolate frosted", yet when you go through the drive-thru there's a 50/50 chance of getting the wrong one regardless of which name you use. So after a while, you just say "chocolate donut" and cross your fingers.

But I digress. 

The thing is, it turns out that Arizona (the state) doesn't have the same rule. In fact, out there, the Dunkin' Donuts are few and far between. Mind you, Arizona (the guy) has mentioned this in the past, but I think part of me had attributed this to the decade he spent in NYC, away from the wild west. (Whoops, just wrote that as 'wild wet', which totally wasn't where I was going.) So it's interesting to hear that it's a real, current thing. Really? No DDs? No ten-minute rule? This is going to take some time to process. You mean there are states out there that aren't peppered with Stop 'n' Shops, Jiffy Lubes, and Eastern Mountain Sports? Dude...

So how about you? What comes under the ten-minute rule where you live? Now I'm curious!