We live near SE 44th and Choctaw Rd. We have an appointment near Penn and Memorial at 8:30 AM Thursday. Since we're retired and rarely leave the house that early for anything, we aren't familiar with the traffic. Google Maps says it will take 35 minutes. We'll be using the turnpike for part of the drive. Any suggestions about how early we should drag our ole bods out on the road? Thanks!

If it were me, I would leave the house at 7:30, but certainly no later than 7:45.

Honestly, I find Google Maps to be pretty accurate; they use live traffic data to help estimate your arrival time. If you're using Google Maps on a regular computer, there's a dropdown under the text boxes for entering your starting location and destination that, by default, says Leave Now. If you click that, you'll get two other options - Depart at and Arrive by. Those other two options allow you to specify a date and time in the future, and they'll take historical traffic data into account to guess at what your travel time should be. Here's an example:

12749

All that said, I'd guesstimate that it should take - at maximum - 45 minutes for that trip around morning rush... Google appears to agree with that assessment as well (30-40 min), according to these directions (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/SE+44th+St+%26+S+Choctaw+Rd,+Choctaw,+OK+73020/W+Memorial+Rd+%26+N+Pennsylvania+Ave,+Oklahoma+Cit y,+OK+73120/@35.5019956,-97.5649932,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m18!4m17!1m5!1m1!1s0x87b23758838d2b bd:0xcc9d0cfce75379e4!2m2!1d-97.265008!2d35.420756!1m5!1m1!1s0x87b21c6b84a2c1c1 :0xdf133ce796c83f22!2m2!1d-97.5493749!2d35.6085018!2m3!6e1!7e2!8j1467880200!3 e0).