The Village Idiot: One wrong turn deserves another
I am never going to catch the flight. My plane is leaving in 20 minutes and I’m still on the freeway 20 miles out of town. Even if there’s no traffic, even if I get off at the right exit, even if I make every light, I will still have to return the rental car, check my luggage, get through security and then run through the terminal like a madman. What’s the point? I’ll hyperventilate if I keep this up. I will just slow down and catch the next flight and admit that I have been defeated once again by road signs.
I should have known this would happen. When I arrived the rental car people gave me a local map and a card with directions on how to get out of the airport.
“At the airport exit, go north two blocks to Exit 6.” At the airport exit there is no sign that says “North” or “Exit 6.” A quick glance at the map. My final destination is not on it. It is getting dark. I am in a car I have never driven before in town I have never been in before. What could possibly go wrong?
The guy behind me starts to honk. I try to honk back but can’t find the horn. I angrily double-swish the windshield wipers at him. That ought to shut him up.
After a few wrong turns I finally ended up on the eight-lane highway that would whisk me out of town to a vacation paradise an hour away. I called my host on the cell phone and told him I was headed west as fast as I could and I should be there in an hour.
“How long have you been going west?”
“Oh, about half an hour.”
“Good, that’s not too bad. Now take the next exit and get off. You should be going east. We’re on the east side of town. We’ll hold dinner for you.”
What is wrong with my mental map? How did I get so twisted around? A half hour later my host called to find out how I was doing.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“You tell me,” I said, “I just passed a Home Depot and an Olive Garden. Wait a minute, there’s a Pizza Hut and a Wendy’s coming up. Does that ring a bell with you? Am I getting close?” Apparently even these distinctive landmarks couldn’t tell him which direction I was going or what town I was in.
I did make it, but it seems as if there must be an easier way.
I don’t expect road signs to say things like “Bob’s House” or “Stephanie’s Wedding Reception” or “That Little Place You Liked So Much the Last Time You Were Here” but then “Exit 9, West Moletown” really doesn’t help much either if you’re not from West Moletown. Can’t there be some sort of happy medium? After all, signs are for people who don’t know where they’re going, not for people who do. Going 65 m.p.h. on a busy freeway is not the place to be looking at a map. It’s not where I want to have to make split-second decisions.
Even when they get the signs right, the local highway departments seem to have unique ways of placing them. In the town I was visiting, the words “Next Right” seem to mean “Previous Right.” “Next Exit” means “Previous Exit” and “Left Lane Ends” means “Have a Pleasant Near Death Experience.”
“Men Working” pretty much meant what it does everywhere, “Long, Random Delays for No Visible Reason.” “Detour” means “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.”
Now, on the reverse trip I knew I would have the same trouble all over again. So I left an hour early. I failed to make one correct turn, failed to take one correct exit, I even over-shot the entrance to the airport and had to make a U-turn on a six-lane highway.
But I did make the flight. The flight crew was delayed. Seems they got stuck in traffic.
Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life” and “Baby’s First Tattoo.” You can reach him at [email protected].