Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for March 07, 2024

People are always happy to tell me where to go. ;-)

Make a right where the barn used to be. Then go half way before you hit the 7-11.

First you need to make a U-turn, and then drive for 40,680 km. You can’t miss it.

Lois McMaster Bujold wrote a novel The Hallowed Hunt in which one of the characters … a sorceress with a chaos demon, disagrees with her linear thinking husband about how to find the person they’re looking for in a strange town. She says it always works best to just wander around aimlessly until you meet your target.

Turn by the big tree.

There once was a very useful tool…..back in the day……it was called a MAP!!!!

They actually make still make detailed atlases of cities in some places, like London, where “you can’t there from here” is almost literally true.

I never get lost. I just take some creative routes.

Sounds like NASCAR… Go Real Fast Then Turn Left

That is how people give directions in Southern California.

One of my favorite stories is ( he ask a question " where is a certain place " ? And the response is " Where are we now " ? : ) <<<< sorry that was funny a long time ago .

You could just say, “Ask someone else.”

Around here its, don’t go out on the highway, you will eventually find where you are going. I live in Eunice’s house, I used to own Olga’s. Nobody uses street names or numbers

I thought directions had to include “Just go left a mile after you pass where the school used to be.”

“…oh, you can’t get there from here…”

In that car, she’ll need to pedal really fast to get there.

The liberal’s mantra.

I remember road atlases with a great deal of fondness. I had one for Montreal, one for Quebec City, one for Ottawa, and one for Toronto.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.-Dirk Gently

Take a left at the tree with a swing on it, go until you see the tree barn and turn right, follow that to the blue fence and you will be there

It’s just over yonder…..

no matter which route you choose to get there faster, TRAFFIC will always slow you down!

Uh, GPS is a system of satellites which has no idea where you are or where you’re going.

works for me

It’s 4 blocks past where he told her.

In San Francisco, one of the local pranks is misdirecting tourists looking for the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s not the destination; it’s the journey.

Every time my ‘grand teen’ comments on my preference for looking at a map before we set out [“You have GPS, you don’t need a map”], I remember the section of Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” where they explain how they hid the catapult. It was easy because they were all underground and everyone, including the inspectors, traveled by subway. They got on and they got off — with no idea the direction or distance between the two points. At least underground, on the Moon, there wasn’t much to see anyway; but, here on earth, there is some purpose to actually knowing where you are and how you got there.

My ‘grand teen’ and their contemporaries have no idea how to find anything on their own. They don’t know landmarks or pay attention to direction. In town, they may know how to bike to friends’ homes, but they may not know the actual address or the names of any of the streets they cross to get there. If they need to get to someplace new, they just look at the GPS and listen. They don’t bother to remember the address because it will be ‘on their phone.’ They don’t notice buildings or fields or changes in the sky, or the elk herd [unless it is blocking the road]. They miss out on so much. Soon they will be learning to drive and, at least in our family, they will be learning to navigate without the constant help of GPS and Siri. [BTW, the voice of Siri is actually Karen Jacobsen, a voiceover artist from Queensland Australia.]

Does anyone know how to fix gps directions? Apartment dweller here. Our building is separate from the larger complex, and our driveway is next to the city street given for everyone’s address (plus apt number). The driveway doesn’t appear on any map except satellite view. When gps tells drivers to take the first right, many new visitors blindly follow the directions down our dead end driveway. What follows ranges from chill drivers simply turning around to exasperated hotheads spinning their tires and running into the fence—and occasionally parked cars—as they try to find the very short way back to the street. We worry that someone’s going to get injured one day.

back in the day men would never read the map…….always gave it to the woman

Goofy conversation….

“Say friend, can you tell me how to get to the train station?”

“Oh, you mean from here?”

“No, no, tell me how to get there from your house…..”

Current GPS has equal moments of cluelessness.

I’ve always had a good sense of direction and spatial awareness; even when I wasn’t sure exactly where my destination was, I never felt lost and knew the direction I needed to go, and reading a map was never a problem. Then when GPS came out, it was a fun new bit of tech and I mostly enjoyed using it, but after awhile it felt like it was dumbing me down. I would arrive somewhere and I would realize I didn’t really know where I was, except for the destination point, and I didn’t have the usual certainty of sense of direction and spatial awareness, and the route home would not be clear in my mind. I didn’t like that feeling. I felt like I was losing something precious and very practical. I found myself using GPS when I didn’t really need to and that only hastened the sense of loss and disorientation. Now I don’t use GPS at all, and my innate sense of orientation has come back. I’ll look at a digital map to get the big picture and decide my route, but I don’t use it to navigate mile by mile.

If,like me, you have never had GPS,and must have directions,and can’t find them on your map/road atlas:I found if you’re in an “Ify” neighborhood, look for a fire station.They know where everything is. Lost in a rural area try a post office.

Good luck in Atlanta,Ga.,which has at least three dozen “Peachtree Streets”

Actually, it’s Burt’s old-school misogynist GPS system.

Better than the GPS map that directed me to an invisible store in the middle of a parking lot. Still haven’t found it.

“I have never been lost. But I have been confused for three or four days several times.” D. Boone

Guys’ Proprioceptive Sense.

Take a right where the barn used to be

rerouting…rerouting…rerouting………

I remember walking past a park near North Sydney (one of the northern suburbs of Sydney, donchaknow), when a car pulled up along side me with a male driver and a female passenger – both late 40s, I guess. She asked if I knew how to get to a particular conference centre on Sydney Harbour. I said, ‘Well, first, you’re on the wrong side of the harbour ..’ Before I could give them cogent directions, she rounded on her (I think) husband and said “I THOUGHT SO!!” between her teeth. I had the distinct impression that if the floor could have opened up and swallowed him he would have been grateful. I gave them directions and sent them on their way. Could have happened to anyone, of course.