"Whan that Aprille" is not here yet, of course, but it should be, and in its spirit and in a fit of rebellion against the mother company my manager-and-friend Ashleigh and I journeyed across the frozen flatlands of Indiana to the Ann Taylor LOFT at Ft. Wayne.
"Our clothes are so freaking overpriced," Ashleigh said. "Let's get to the LOFT."
So we did. And it was a Herculean feat arriving there.
First, I had to meet her at her house, which is approximately half an hour across confusing backroads from mine. I dutifully printed out the mapquest directions, but when Ashleigh called to find out what time I'd get to her house, she told me not to bother with the mapquest directions and gave me directions of her own. Which left me far more confused; but determined to trust her (after all, she lives here), I abandoned mapquest and embarked on a long journey of lostness.
Indiana's highways are poorly marked. Combined with the fact that the only time I've been to Ashleigh's house was in the dark on three hours of sleep, and with the more important fact that I get lost at least once the first time I drive anywhere, it was a perfect recipe for disaster. And when I say poorly marked, I mean poorly. The signs warn you half a mile beforehand where a junction occurs, but don't tell you which intersection the junction is. So you guess. The signs also contain vague directions like "South Bend -- Next Exit" without once telling you what road you'll be getting on once you take it. And as you've already passed several "South Bend -- Next Exit"s, you're not quite sure at any given point where you are.
Then there's always the sneaking (and well-founded) fear that the highway you're on will be the road on the Next Exit, and you'll suddenly find yourself, having driven innocently straight, on a new highway taking you to places unknown and unwanted. Then, because there are at least three of every highway -- North, South, and Business -- you're not quite sure which is going to morph into which and you might as well just pick a spot on the highway and start spinning doughnuts.
I did all of this except the doughnuts. I got lost four times on the way to Ashleigh's. It set up an unhealthy precedent. By the time we got on the road, we were heading for our own full day of directional foundering.
The trip there passed without much incident. We got to the LOFT an hour before they closed (it being a Sunday), so we blew our money in a hurry and headed home. Heading home involved getting onto IN 33/MI 69 N for four miles, then catching IN 30 W for the rest of the trip. We found IN 33 (it doesn't really turn into MI 69 until you reach Michigan, which was a good hour and a half away), noted to ourselves that we only needed to be on it for four miles, and settled comfortably in to talk.
After animatedly comparing family histories, we started to notice that the diner we wanted to eat at hadn't appeared. Then we saw a Prime Outlets mall that we hadn't noticed on the way in. We kept getting hungrier but held on until Ashleigh, leaning forward and squinting, said, "Hey...does that sign say 'Welcome to Michigan'?"
Oh yes. It did. Complete with the entering-the-state motto, "Great Lakes...Great Times." We had never left MI 69. So there we were, much farther north than intended, at least two hours from home.
Fortunately Ashleigh has some knowledge of the roads and knew a highway that would get us back without having to retrace our lengthy route. We stopped for dinner where the waitress managed to screw up every course of Ashleigh's meal except dessert. Then we drove the two-hour trip to her house.
I drove from her house to mine without getting lost, although I had to bite my cheek to keep my attention focused. While Michigan highways are careful to post every few hundred yards what highway you're on but never tell you the speed limit (perfect: "Officer, I'm sorry, we've been looking for fifteen miles and haven't seen a speed limit sign"), Indiana highways are careful to post every few hundred yards what the speed limit is but never tell you what road you're on. Which makes me think I'm living a little too far south for this part of the country.
After blundering past four "South Bend -- Next Exits," hanging doggedly on until I reached the one actually labelled the street I live on, I made it home.
Since I bought three new tops and a spring jacket for the price of three sale tops at Ann Taylor, I considered the venture a success.
3 comments:
Oh Sarah, I can SO relate. I really love driving when I know where I'm going, but I've learned to assume that any time I try to go somewhere new, I will become inevitably and catastrophically lost. The first time I drove the route from my apartment to my parents' house, I took the wrong exit, found my way back on the highway by sheer dumb luck, took the wrong exit AGAIN, took a wrong turn or two, realized I'd forgotten my map, wandered directionlessly through three counties until I barely knew my left from my right and finally, taking note of the names of the town and street in which I found myself, pulled over and called my mom (thank God for the hateful cell phone I keep around for emergencies) and got her to mapquest my location and tell me how to get home. My mom, who has a bionic sense of direction, to this day cannot figure out how I ended up where I did.
Ok, so blogger has a serious problem, in that when you try to post a comment, it takes to you the "page not found" screen and then you go back and try again, and again, and again...and alas you see that blogger has indeed posted your comment everytime, hell bent on making you look like a technological retard. With that said, I did not mean to post so many times. Oh well. At least you know I cared enough to keep trying. haha.
Darling, I have been there and I, too, have lost myself many times. I got directions from my boss' house to the office in downtown Anderson for my first day at work a few summers ago and I managed to get horribly lost and show up 45 minutes late for work on a trip that should have taken 10-15 min MAX. Fabulous.
Oh, and you shouldn't worry about speeding in Michigan. The speed limit is 70 mph anyhow, but they won't bust you unless you're doing 80-85. And even then, there's probably some dude in a Hummer doing 95mph and burning a gallon a minute that's a far tastier catch for them anyhow.
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