Sunday, May 16, 2010

Lost, Again

Along with the question theme (see the short post down the page from this one), relating my misadventures in navigation will likely continue to pop up in my blog now and again. I think almost every driving fail story I have is on here at this point. If not, I'll add the rest in the future. I'm sure new adventures will show up as long as I drive new places.

The adventure I will relate today takes us to the land of Price Hill. It is a rather peculiar story for the fact that it is not my fault that we got lost. Nonetheless, we were lost, and I was one of the drivers. The tale begins at Finneytown High School where several of us young female types met to ride down to Imago Nature Reserve in Price Hill for an afternoon of helping children with art. The minivan filled up with Beth as its driver and five freshmen and sophomores (my sister was among them) as passengers, and Marcy filled up with the three '09 girls who had been to Imago dozens of times. Contrary to reason, the minivan led the way. Beth had printed directions, so we assumed we'd be fine following her. To be safe, Courtney, my level-headed navigator got out Janet the GPS and we had Janet map the way in case we got lost.

In an effort to avoid highways as much as possible, we took a route we were less familiar with. Before the real craziness began, we had already turned around once and gone under a super creepy bridge. I made sure the windows were rolled up and the doors locked before anything got weird. Just when I recognized where we were and was sure of how to complete the journey, Beth switched out of the left turn lane and went straight. Not wanting a van full of high school girls to be lost alone in Price Hill and hoping that Beth just had a new set of directions, we switched lanes and followed them. I would like to note that due to the low levels of traffic, this was done without danger of collision.

Anna, my communications coordinator, borrowed my phone to call Raqchell and set up a connection between the two vehicles. It was determined that Beth did not know where we were. Neither did anyone in my car. All we knew was that this wasn't the most pleasant part of town. After much talking (far too much talking, in my opinion), Beth finally turned down a relatively innocuous side street. We took the lead with Courtney navigating via Janet. We learned Beth's phone also had GPS capabilities, so even if we were to lose them they would be able to get directions. It was well that this was the case.

Almost immediately upon returning to the main road, things got confuzzled once more. Beth was not directly behind me. I tried switching lanes to let the irritated driver behind me pass, but evidently he had already switched lanes to pass me. I narrowly avoided collision. Once he had passed me, I switched lanes. This time I checked for other cars rather thoroughly. Unfortunately, the lane I switched to doubled as parking. I signaled to get back into the other lane, but Beth accidentally passed me. Anna immediately got Raqchell back on the phone. We decided both cars would follow their navigation devices and that we would meet up at Imago.

Janet told Courtney to tell me to turn right on White Street. I did just that. As I turned the corner, I was confronted by the steepest road I had ever seen. Bogota roads had nothing on this hill. Considering the fact that Bogota roads climb up mountains, you can get an idea of how steep of a downhill grade greeted us on White Street. Courtney gasped, I shouted "oh dear" (or something like that), and profanities began to stream from Anna's mouth. To make matters more terrifying, all that I could see at the bottom of the hill when I turned was a huge abandoned building that had clearly been a grandiose school back in the day. I am not ashamed to admit that I was scared. I am not often scared, but I was definitely frightened turning onto White Street. Fortunately the hill was short. A little bit of street looped around in front of the former school, so I pulled onto that to collect myself. A more thorough look at my surroundings revealed that White Street was a residential street. Once you managed to pass the uber creepy super massive building I was stopped in front of. My calm restored, I mentally prayed, determined that my best bet was to follow Janet's directions, and continued down White Street. It was a very hilly street, but it never got nearly as bad as it had been where I turned off of the main road.

The next few turns took us into increasingly unpleasant parts of Price Hill, but that didn't last long. A turn or two brought us into the slightly better parts of Price Hill that we recognized as the route to Imago. Anna's memory eventually disagreed with Janet. After a moment of deliberation I circled the block and trusted Anna. She got us there just fine.

We called Raqchell to see how the van was faring and discovered that they were safely into recognized territory. The following hour of crafts on the forest trails provided much-needed relief from the tension of the drive. I got back to Finneytown without incident. I knew the way, but I kept Janet out just to be safe. It was not until several hours later that I fully calmed down. I considered asking for a big hug when I reached the church. I probably should have, but I was afraid I might have a meltdown. I think what really unnerved me on this misadventure was the fact that I was also trying to keep a van full of dearly beloved high school girls safe in addition to getting myself to the destination. The terrifying turn onto White Street didn't help any, but that alone would not have been enough to leave me shaken for hours after the fact.

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