Best Directions Ever
Mar. 11th, 2009 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnmpsnYesterday, for reasons I don't need to go into at this juncture,* I had to go to the FedEx Ground facility in a neighboring town to pick up a package (Direct Signature Required; why did I not know this in advance, so I could have delivery at the office?). In a vast mutlitude of ways (see previous parenthetical note for one), this was as inconvenient as it could possibly be. However, I got a good, honest laugh out of the venture when I went to Google Maps to get directions from my office to the place.
My office is less than a mile from an on-ramp to the highway. There are a couple of turns to get out of the immediate neighborhood onto a semi-major street; from there you take a (simple, right-hand) turn (at a normal, 4-way intersection with a traffic light) onto a major street, and then onto the highway.
Google maps way of dealing with the major intersection: go straight thru, make a U-turn, then a left.
Yes, the written directions indicate that you make a U-turn (at an intersection that doesn't even have a median!) and a left to make a simple right; and when you zoom in on the map, the purple line shows the nice, neat square you will get if you do so.
This made me laugh out loud. (note: I decided to forgo the directions for the early part of the trip, and pick up once I got on the highway. So I would get there in one piece.)
* so a short version of the story is that the package is related to the trip I am planning --- two months from today I take off, fly to London, and thence on to visiting friends in Scotland and then Stockholm. Thank the heavens for academic friends who take their sabbaticals to teach abroad, and then welcome visitors!
My office is less than a mile from an on-ramp to the highway. There are a couple of turns to get out of the immediate neighborhood onto a semi-major street; from there you take a (simple, right-hand) turn (at a normal, 4-way intersection with a traffic light) onto a major street, and then onto the highway.
Google maps way of dealing with the major intersection: go straight thru, make a U-turn, then a left.
Yes, the written directions indicate that you make a U-turn (at an intersection that doesn't even have a median!) and a left to make a simple right; and when you zoom in on the map, the purple line shows the nice, neat square you will get if you do so.
This made me laugh out loud. (note: I decided to forgo the directions for the early part of the trip, and pick up once I got on the highway. So I would get there in one piece.)
* so a short version of the story is that the package is related to the trip I am planning --- two months from today I take off, fly to London, and thence on to visiting friends in Scotland and then Stockholm. Thank the heavens for academic friends who take their sabbaticals to teach abroad, and then welcome visitors!
