1921 - Maps

Back to the trip. I like maps. I don't have a GPS. Maybe some day but not now. Maps are still better as far as I'm concerned. I've been with people that have GPS systems as their GPS unit ran them around in circles. One person asked me if I knew what the GPS was trying to tell us. The 'right turn' it was telling us to make was actually going up an entrance ramp that turned to the right. The access to the ramp was straight, not to the right.

That said, Bilbo gave me directions to get to the Metro station while we were in DC. And his directions were good. I checked the map and it looked pretty easy. Take 7100 which turns into 7900 and you're there. What I wasn't counting on was the crappy signage or lack there of in the DC area.

I found myself here.



What is not obvious when sitting at this stop light is that you are on top of I95. There were no signs to indicate we could have turned onto I95. And being the nerdy guy I am the railroad crossing gates that control traffic caught my eye just long enough to miss I95 altogether.

Did I mention that there was no indication that route 7100 had changed to 7900?

So we kept going straight. And soon we ran out of road. I knew we had missed something so we turned into a 7/11 gas station. I went inside with my map. There are two 20 somethings manning the registers. They see the map and ask 'you need directions?' I said 'well can you just show me where I am on the map?' ........ 'Nope'. What? 'Can't you just point to where this gas station is on the map?' ....... 'Nope'.

'We can tell you how to get places from here but we don't know anything about maps'. So they make an attempt to tell me how to get back to where I wanted to go using fast food places as references. We tried to follow the directions but gave up. I finally figured out where we were on the map. We went to Mount Vernon instead that day.