Last time, I was in a truck going from town $A$ to town $C$ via $B$. After five minutes of travel, I asked the driver how far we were from $A$. "Half as far as from B," was the answer. I complained about the slow speed of the truck, to which the driver noted that the truck was not capable of greater speed, but it would maintain its current speed for the rest of the journey.

$13 \mathrm{~km}$ from $B$, I asked how far we were from $C$. I got the same answer, letter for letter, as to my first question. A quarter of an hour later, we arrived at our destination. How many kilometers is the route from $A$ to $C$?
I. solution: According to the first answer, in 5 minutes they covered one-third of the $A B$ route, so they completed the entire $A B$ route in 15 minutes. According to the second answer, the remaining part from $B$ to $C$, 13 km away, is one-third of the $B C$ segment. Since they covered this in 15 minutes, the two-thirds part: $13 \mathrm{~km}-30$ minutes. Thus, the length of the 15-minute segment before $C$ is $6.5 \mathrm{~km}$, and the length of the $A B$ (also 15-minute) segment is also $6.5 \mathrm{~km}$, since the speed was constant throughout the journey.

The route between $A$ and $B$ is therefore a total of $26 \mathrm{~km}$, and it took them 60 minutes to complete.

II. solution: Since the car covered the $A B$ route in 15 minutes and one-third of the $B C$ segment in the same amount of time, $A B$ is one-third of $B C$, and $A B$ together with the 15-minute segment before $C$ make up half of the entire $A C$ route. Thus, the 13 km segment after $B$ is also half of the entire route, so the total route is 26 km long.