Directionally-impaired musing of the moment
Even if I did actually manage to get my driver’s license and feel vaguely comfortable behind the wheel of a car, I still doubt I’d be doing much in the way of driving.
I still have absolutely no idea how to get from Macon to Athens and back. I’ve gone back and forth fairly frequently, but I still can’t remember exactly where along the route the various turns I’d need to make are. And the roads I need to turn on are just random meaningless numbered highways that I can’t remember, so that doesn’t help me pinpoint things any! If the streets actually had names that were in my mind meaningful, that would definitely help jog my memory… or if I could read a highway map without getting visually overloaded… :-\
And Google’s directions make me go by way of the interstate part of the way, which does NOT help me any, given that the interstate scares me. Maybe in about 5 years or so… OK, probably 10… I’ll feel vaguely, remotely comfortable driving at interstate speeds. Not to mention merging onto the interstate— and changing lanes on it— which scare me even more than driving on it.
Sometimes, I just feel hopeless. ::sigh::
Interstate? To Macon? WTF? Well, we know that’s wrong. My route seems pretty reasonable, and there aren’t more than a few turns. The problem in Georgia is a lack of signs where you need them — so I’ve gotten very lost in Atlanta and trying to find Conyers — and the problem anywhere is that you can’t figure out the four or five highway numbers that every turn has fast enough. We seem to use one highway number to indicate a road, but if someone else mentions the number of another route that uses the road then we get thrown for a loop! At this point I remember the trip to Macon visually, and I think I made a wrong turn only once.
Something about driving is that the practice makes you comfortable. Maybe if you never drove much anyway, you would never feel comfortable. Of course, if you have any presence of mind at all the Interstates will always be nerve-wracking. I have driven buses on Interstates, so I had another level of concentration to achieve.
Comment by Adrian — 10-May-2006 @ 10:29 pm