Comments on: So this is the question: was it the same woman?

By: kcom

kcom — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:08:28 +0000

My grandmother set out on the five mile trip to my grandfather’s grave one day. It’s straight up the road along the river and then left on a side street for a couple of hundred yards. She finally came to a stop when something mechanical happened to her car. That was about 110 miles up that same road, which curved all the way around the “thumb” of Michigan. Once she missed the left, she just kept driving and looking. Of course, she had incipient Alzheimer’s and that was her last car journey. And she was 89.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:46:51 +0000

My wife and I use GPS to find locations where we haven’t been, and the directions thereto. It’s particularly useful passing through cities on expressways where you need to know where the interchange is, what lane, etc.
It’s handy to know ETA, for example.
Our Garmin can be set to give turn-by-turn directions, which is also handy. Earlier this week, we were in a medium sized town and Garmin told us to do a particular thing, which we had not done before, and it turned out to be much better. We had just gotten an update.
Two problems: If you want an alternate route for some reason, you need a map. GPS will only take you from where you are to where you want to go most directly. You can’t mapquest, entering a different starting point.
The other is a bias toward the expressway. You’ll go out of your way to get a couple of useless miles on the limited access road.

In the old days, of adventure novels, of difficulties, of private eye novels, there was never a problem lighting a fire. Everybody smoked, so everybody had matches or a cigarette lighter. Today, an author putting a source of ignition into the story would have to elaborate on it. Guy’s a survivalist. Carries a steel match because he’s always prepared. Just happened to be going to a picnic and had the charcoal and matches with him. I once tried lighting a piece of newspaper soaked with charcoal lighter fluid from the car’s cigarette lighter. Didn’t work.

By: MissJean

MissJean — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:07:39 +0000

OC had me laughing with Quail in Terror Street, but that Quayle Corner is so funny! Here, they’d call it Whispering Quail Corner because all newer subdivisions had to have adjectives.

By: MissJean

MissJean — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:05:45 +0000

What a great story about the Belgium woman! I’d love to know how much driving she’d done as opposed to taking public transportation. I think a lot depends on the type of road and distances one covers. Commuter/carpool lanes confuse me because Detroit doesn’t have them. I overshot Toronto once because I took a bypass lane instead of business loop, or some such thing during rush hour. Last year I cut through Atlanta pretty quick because I took the “shortcuts” illegally.

On the flip side, my sis and one of my brothers never get lost because they drive everywhere, like Johnny Cash sang. Sis worked for a regional distributor with a big field assignment and Bro test-drove for GM while he finished his engineering degree.

BTW I know several older women who drove primarily short distances (no more than 40 miles each way) and who preferred that their husbands drive long distances. Therefore, when their spouses died, they had the “adventure” of driving across the state for the first time. One of them became lost after dark, checked into a hotel, and the next day at breakfast met her future husband. So maybe it’s not all that bad, eh?

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:56:10 +0000

Occam’s Beard: was there a Dan Quayle Corner?

By: Occam's Beard

Occam's Beard — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:31:39 +0000

I have to confess I love GPS, now that we have it. I don’t use it for gross directions (e.g., city to city) navigation, but love it for finding 1234 BackOfNowhere Lane in an unfamiliar area.

Friends of ours used to live in a development where EVERY street name began with “Quail.” It was Quail Hollow, Quail View, Quail Crossing, Quail Valley, Quail Ridge, Quail Droppings, Quail in Terror, etc. and the streets were laid out on the pattern of the small intestine around a golf course (so sense of direction was useless). (Neo will probably related to this; the place reminded me a lot of Boston.) Last, best of all, it was new and didn’t appear on my map. I wished I’d had GPS when we visited them!

By: expat

expat — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:17:13 +0000

Boy, my husband and I are definitely outliers. I am the GPS for us on trips, and he follows my directions. I don’t claim any inborn sense of direction, but I do look at maps before we take off and pay attention to route numbers, street names, names of towns along the way, and other potential landmarks. My husband fills up the tank and loads luggage. It’s a perfect fit.

I would probably get lost in the woods.

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:32:32 +0000

… And that wasn’t the story I was looking for, so maybe it’s just as well that you probably can’t read it…my bad, sorry.

The one I WAS looking for was about a woman whose rental car ran off the road and ended up in a pond. She’d been told to stay in the car if there was any problem, so that’s exactly what she did. For about a week.

As I remember, the original story included a picture of a police officer standing by the stranded car. The water came up to his knees.

news.yahoo.com/texas-woman-stranded-car-idaho-dairy-pond-221123633.html

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:19:28 +0000

How about this one ?

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1105840–woman-stranded-by-snow-10-days-...

By: parker

parker — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:31:19 +0000

” Wyoming in its entirety is west of Nebraska.” As far as Wyoming is concerned Nebraska is east of Wyoming and Mountain Time starts in the portion of Nebraska that should be a part of Wyoming. 😉