Made my annual trip to the tax preparer after work tonight. I ended up a victim of Urban Sprawl, as the business had moved way the heck out to the northwest (where the buffalo still roam and men are men, I trust). I had their directions with me, but as I followed the road eastward, (apparently) past all development, and found myself surrounded by gravel pits, I figured I must have gone the wrong way (I often get turned around, reading maps. I think I have an internal compass, but I also have an internal distorting magnet). So I turned back west, and that was no better. Finally I broke down and used my cell phone to call them (costs me money, since mine is designed for emergencies only. Which this was), and the lady explained that I’d been right the first time. I’d just lost confidence.
There’s a lesson here, I suppose. Something about putting your hand to the plow and not looking back, or Lot’s wife, or something. You can be wrong because you went the wrong way, or you can be wrong because you went the right way, but insufficiently.
In my heart, though, I believe that if I’d stubbornly kept on east on my first try, the space-time continuum would have spiraled, the earth’s crust would have shifted, and my goal would have turned out to be west after all.
Have a good weekend.
I once had a similar experience, although I followed the directions faithfully and found the church in spite of my feelings about being lost. The directions were from Yahoo, and I sensed that God told me I sometimes trusted Yahoo more than I trusted Yahweh.
Yahoo is very reliable, providing you drive the route first to discover where it’s wrong. 😉
Traveling as much as I do, I’ve found that Yahoo does have the small problems like you mention (telling you to turn right instead of left or telling you to turn onto a street that you can see but can’t get to). Mapquest I avoid like the plague, and Google is probably the best, especially with the new feature that allows you to drag and adjust the route to roads that you are familiar with.
I’ve had similar issues of losing faith in the directions and it has involved gravel roads as well. 🙂
As a former cartographic draftsman, I have a better-than-average sense of direction. But I’m a lousy judge of distance. However, I have a keen sense of danger. All of which means I make a lot of U-turns 🙂
I once went way too far north on a street in search of a used bookstore. I wound up in the boonies, when I should have been in mid-town. But I didn’t have Google or Yahoo–just a mis-read address!
I’ve been lost plenty of times, but not with directions. That’s probably due to my not going anywhere much. (How’s that for good grammar?)
I was in the van on a youth trip when the driver questioned our directions. It was similar to your story, Lars. We were told to turn onto the highway and drive until we saw a certain turn-off. The directions did not say how far to drive or that we would be going through a retirement community in which all of the street names would change. Fortunately, we did not turn around before we got to the turn-off, but it was close.