I've developed a habit of posting most of my stories from getting lost. Not all of them, because if I posted all of them I wouldn't post much else. I'm not sure if this really counts as being lost, but I'll let you be the judge of that.
Today I went to interview for a possible summer job in Indianapolis. The woman I was emailing offered to give me more detailed directions, but upon checking Google Maps it looked pretty easy to find. All I had to do was drive toward home, get off at a different exit, and stay on that street until I found the relevant office. Just to be safe, I left with ten minutes of buffer room in case I somehow managed to get lost.
I made it all the way to the desired street without event. As the checkered flag indicating my goal on Janet (my GPS) drew nigh, I scanned both sides of the street for any signs of the office. I couldn't find it. I turned around, and drove back the way I had come until I had once more passed Janet's flag. I still didn't see it. So I turned around again. And still didn't find it.
Convinced that turning around and driving past the alleged location once more wouldn't be very helpful, I pulled over in a parking lot to get out the business card of the woman I had been emailing, only to discover that I had left it in my dorm room. I called my mom, and she was kind enough to look up the location on Google Maps again. We pin-pointed the block on which the place should have been, and she tried to get me there that way. I still wasn't seeing anything.
My ever-helpful mother then checked online to find a phone number for me to call. She couldn't find the person I had talked to, but she did find a number for me to try. I called the number, and a friendly man answered it. He was happy to help me find the office. After describing my location, he found the place where he thought I was on Google Maps and then instructed me to drive north. I did so. He named places and streets I should be passing, but I didn't see any of them.
Apparently I was supposed to have headed south rather than north, so I turned around yet again. A few minutes later, I finally found the office thanks to the kind man. It wasn't labeled. It was in a warehouse complex, but the company name wasn't on the sign by the road. Nor was the name on the building itself. There was a pleasant woman sitting outside eating lunch, and she confirmed that the building I had pulled up to was in fact the correct one.
In the end, I was twenty minutes late. My buffer time had not been sufficient. I somehow managed to be lost on the same mile-long stretch of road for a half hour. Fortunately, the interviewers didn't seem too upset by the delay. The interview went well, so hopefully I get the job. I should know sometime next week.
Showing posts with label driving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label driving. Show all posts
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Colombia: Cultural Tidbits
This will be the final post in my Colombia series. There will be no real connection between all these little blurbs, and it will irritate me that I can’t organize it, but I’ll have to get over that. These facts I’ll be sharing are relevant only to the areas we worked in, unless noted otherwise.
Ice cream is huge there. Almost every little store that sells food (and some that don’t) sells ice cream. In the mall, you can stand in any given place and spot at least one ice cream place. At the bigger mall, you can always spot at least two. And it’s good ice cream, too.
The garbage trucks and not the ice cream trucks play the music we associate with ice cream here in the U.S.
There are two ways to rank the affluence of a person by their home: their roof and their walls. Very well-off people have concrete roofs. Everyone else has corrugated metal. Fiberglass panels with the metal serve as sky lights in nicer houses. Bolts hold the roof tight in better houses, while bricks and rocks serve the purpose in worse houses. The best houses are made of bricks covered in concrete and painted bright colors. Minus colors is worse, then minus the concrete layer, and the worst is a house made of boards or corrugated metal tacked and tied together with tarps over the gaps.
Black coffee is sometimes referred to as “la tinta,” which literally means ink.
The most commonly eaten meats are chicken and beef.
Complex carbs are responsible for most of their diet. Potatoes, plantains, yucca, and rice are the most common, but pasta can also be found.
Fruit typically comes from street vendors who bring in their goods from their farms every day in trucks that we would consider valuable antiques.
Their hot chocolate is stronger and a touch more bitter than ours. I like it a lot more.
When they make fruit juice, they take the fruit, remove leaves or stems, stick it in a blender, add a bit of water, and blend it all up. It adds a whole new dimension of texture to your juice experience.
There are stray dogs all over the place. You can walk one block and see a dozen. They ignore you if you ignore them. From what I can tell, they live off of garbage and the occasional rat. At night they like to bark endlessly.
At church they have a few customary question and response things they use at the beginning of a service or whenever they need to get people's attention. It goes like this: "Que vive?" "Christo!" "Y su nombre es?" "Gloria!" It translates to this: "Who lives?" "Christ!" "And what is his name?" "Glorious!" It's neat to hear everyone shout the answers.
The day starts when the sun comes up. At 5:30 am there are already people up and about, mariachi music playing from windows, and stores open.
Few people have cars, but the ones who do drive aggressively. As do the motorcycles, taxis, buses, and trucks. Traffic is insane down there. Only the brave can manage to get anywhere.
Nobody has room for a garden, but house plants are popular, especially geraniums.
When someone can afford to paint their house, they use bright colors and patterns. Most of the patterns feature diamonds, sometimes with circles.
All doors and windows have metal gratings to reduce theft. These gratings come in all sort of designs and patterns from rectangles to rays to flowers. They add charm to any home.
Their Coke is made with cane sugar and is therefore superior in taste to American Coke. Even I, who am not well acquainted with any sort of pop, recognized this.
Chickens roam the city, like the dogs, but in lesser quantities. They can be found on roofs, unlike the dogs, and are noisy in the morning rather than at night.
It is common for friends, especially females, to greet each other with a kiss on the cheek.
When you say hello at church, "Dios bendiga" is the key phrase. It means "God bless you."
Ice cream is huge there. Almost every little store that sells food (and some that don’t) sells ice cream. In the mall, you can stand in any given place and spot at least one ice cream place. At the bigger mall, you can always spot at least two. And it’s good ice cream, too.
The garbage trucks and not the ice cream trucks play the music we associate with ice cream here in the U.S.
There are two ways to rank the affluence of a person by their home: their roof and their walls. Very well-off people have concrete roofs. Everyone else has corrugated metal. Fiberglass panels with the metal serve as sky lights in nicer houses. Bolts hold the roof tight in better houses, while bricks and rocks serve the purpose in worse houses. The best houses are made of bricks covered in concrete and painted bright colors. Minus colors is worse, then minus the concrete layer, and the worst is a house made of boards or corrugated metal tacked and tied together with tarps over the gaps.
Black coffee is sometimes referred to as “la tinta,” which literally means ink.
The most commonly eaten meats are chicken and beef.
Complex carbs are responsible for most of their diet. Potatoes, plantains, yucca, and rice are the most common, but pasta can also be found.
Fruit typically comes from street vendors who bring in their goods from their farms every day in trucks that we would consider valuable antiques.
Their hot chocolate is stronger and a touch more bitter than ours. I like it a lot more.
When they make fruit juice, they take the fruit, remove leaves or stems, stick it in a blender, add a bit of water, and blend it all up. It adds a whole new dimension of texture to your juice experience.
There are stray dogs all over the place. You can walk one block and see a dozen. They ignore you if you ignore them. From what I can tell, they live off of garbage and the occasional rat. At night they like to bark endlessly.
At church they have a few customary question and response things they use at the beginning of a service or whenever they need to get people's attention. It goes like this: "Que vive?" "Christo!" "Y su nombre es?" "Gloria!" It translates to this: "Who lives?" "Christ!" "And what is his name?" "Glorious!" It's neat to hear everyone shout the answers.
The day starts when the sun comes up. At 5:30 am there are already people up and about, mariachi music playing from windows, and stores open.
Few people have cars, but the ones who do drive aggressively. As do the motorcycles, taxis, buses, and trucks. Traffic is insane down there. Only the brave can manage to get anywhere.
Nobody has room for a garden, but house plants are popular, especially geraniums.
When someone can afford to paint their house, they use bright colors and patterns. Most of the patterns feature diamonds, sometimes with circles.
All doors and windows have metal gratings to reduce theft. These gratings come in all sort of designs and patterns from rectangles to rays to flowers. They add charm to any home.
Their Coke is made with cane sugar and is therefore superior in taste to American Coke. Even I, who am not well acquainted with any sort of pop, recognized this.
Chickens roam the city, like the dogs, but in lesser quantities. They can be found on roofs, unlike the dogs, and are noisy in the morning rather than at night.
It is common for friends, especially females, to greet each other with a kiss on the cheek.
When you say hello at church, "Dios bendiga" is the key phrase. It means "God bless you."
Friday, July 30, 2010
Colombia: Tourist Days
Our three VBS and construction days were flanked by two days of touristy stuff. On Monday we visited Monserrate and the largest mall and South America, and on Friday we went to the Salt Cathedral and a smaller mall.
For those of us who went on the trip two years ago, this was our second time at Monserrate. Monserrate is a chapel perched atop the highest point in Bogota. It has beautiful gardens, charming architecture, and a spectacular view of the massive city of Bogota. I loved it last time, and it was no less exciting to me this time around. To get up to the chapel, you ride the Funicular, a cable car sort of thing that you stand in as you head up the steep mountainside. At the top, we were given free rein to wander as we wished. I looked around at the scenery for a while and then headed to the alley full of vendors. I bought three pairs of earrings and a purse. I’ve decided to downgrade purse sizes. My old purse consistently weighed about ten pounds. I couldn’t carry it at Purdue along with my book-bag, or it would give me back and shoulder problems. My new purse is less than half the capacity. It holds the bare necessities (from my point of view) from my old purse. I still have the other one, and thanks to the fact that I kept its contents compartmentalized into pouches I can quickly switch back to it if the occasion calls for my characteristic Mary Poppins purse. We got a group picture, rode back down in the Funicular, and waited for our bus. We were waiting next to a man with a saddled llama. He could tell that we were amused by his llama, so he let all of us who were interested take turns sitting on the llama. We finished right about when the bus arrived.
The mall wasn’t terribly exciting to me. I don’t much care for malls in the U.S., and this one wasn’t much different. It was well-designed and decorated though, I must say. My dad and brother weren’t too excited by it either, so after I helped Bill and Keri order from Dunkin’ Donuts and ordered ice cream for the three of us, we went back outside and sat near a fountain until it was time to go.
After our three days of work, we took another day off to leave the city and visit El Cathedral de Sal in the neighboring city of Zipaquira. The Salt Cathedral is built into a salt mine. Everything is carved into the salt and is completely made of salt (except for a few places where granite or marble were used to reinforce the floor). It is comprised of fourteen “chapels” representing the fourteen stages of the cross, according to Catholic tradition. At each stage is a sculpture involving a cross and the surrounding salt symbolizing the events of that stage. We were led through the cathedral by an English-speaking Colombian man who seemed to have learned his English from someone from Australia. He was not only informative, but also incredibly entertaining - even more entertaining than he intended to be. It was a beautiful place. While some stopped at the coffee shop at the end of the tour (after all, there is no other coffee shop in the world farther beneath the surface than the one there), I set off to take pictures.
After the Salt Cathedral, we drove to another mall smaller than the first. We ate lunch there, and then I sat down and read. I had become very dehydrated and was starting to feel dizzy with an insanely fast pulse. Fortunately I had brought both a book and a water bottle in my purse, so once I sat down and drank some I started to feel better. The drive back was long, but we passed through some beautiful countryside areas and colorful urban regions. Colombia is a beautiful country.
For those of us who went on the trip two years ago, this was our second time at Monserrate. Monserrate is a chapel perched atop the highest point in Bogota. It has beautiful gardens, charming architecture, and a spectacular view of the massive city of Bogota. I loved it last time, and it was no less exciting to me this time around. To get up to the chapel, you ride the Funicular, a cable car sort of thing that you stand in as you head up the steep mountainside. At the top, we were given free rein to wander as we wished. I looked around at the scenery for a while and then headed to the alley full of vendors. I bought three pairs of earrings and a purse. I’ve decided to downgrade purse sizes. My old purse consistently weighed about ten pounds. I couldn’t carry it at Purdue along with my book-bag, or it would give me back and shoulder problems. My new purse is less than half the capacity. It holds the bare necessities (from my point of view) from my old purse. I still have the other one, and thanks to the fact that I kept its contents compartmentalized into pouches I can quickly switch back to it if the occasion calls for my characteristic Mary Poppins purse. We got a group picture, rode back down in the Funicular, and waited for our bus. We were waiting next to a man with a saddled llama. He could tell that we were amused by his llama, so he let all of us who were interested take turns sitting on the llama. We finished right about when the bus arrived.
The mall wasn’t terribly exciting to me. I don’t much care for malls in the U.S., and this one wasn’t much different. It was well-designed and decorated though, I must say. My dad and brother weren’t too excited by it either, so after I helped Bill and Keri order from Dunkin’ Donuts and ordered ice cream for the three of us, we went back outside and sat near a fountain until it was time to go.
After our three days of work, we took another day off to leave the city and visit El Cathedral de Sal in the neighboring city of Zipaquira. The Salt Cathedral is built into a salt mine. Everything is carved into the salt and is completely made of salt (except for a few places where granite or marble were used to reinforce the floor). It is comprised of fourteen “chapels” representing the fourteen stages of the cross, according to Catholic tradition. At each stage is a sculpture involving a cross and the surrounding salt symbolizing the events of that stage. We were led through the cathedral by an English-speaking Colombian man who seemed to have learned his English from someone from Australia. He was not only informative, but also incredibly entertaining - even more entertaining than he intended to be. It was a beautiful place. While some stopped at the coffee shop at the end of the tour (after all, there is no other coffee shop in the world farther beneath the surface than the one there), I set off to take pictures.
After the Salt Cathedral, we drove to another mall smaller than the first. We ate lunch there, and then I sat down and read. I had become very dehydrated and was starting to feel dizzy with an insanely fast pulse. Fortunately I had brought both a book and a water bottle in my purse, so once I sat down and drank some I started to feel better. The drive back was long, but we passed through some beautiful countryside areas and colorful urban regions. Colombia is a beautiful country.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Pennsylvania
I’ve already enumerated most of my Pennsylvania adventures to my only consistent reader, so I won’t go into great detail here. Plus, I’m sure I've already forgotten countless little events. I’ll just give a generalized account of my attitude going into the trip and the turn-around that had occurred by the time I headed home.
The Thursday before I left I considered calling Adrianne and canceling my plans. I was insanely stressed out. Traveling always stresses me out, plus I was driving eight hours by myself to a place I had never been before to spend a week with a family (at this time I still thought that just meant immediate family) I barely knew (except for Adrianne). Plus I was still pulling together last-minute preparations for teaching VBS and the women’s group, NHCC’s VBS was lurking around the corner, I would soon need to put together a lesson for all of Joshua for the high school girls, etc. And then there was the whole wheelbarrow injury. I was just way too stressed out and terrified of driving alone for eight hours. But I decided to go anyway.
I arrived almost uneventfully. I started driving at the secondary dip in my Circadian rhythm, which was a horrible idea. I had to stop three times in the first two or three hours because I had a hard time staying awake. Once I came back to my normal self, the driving went smoothly. The toll road confusion worked itself out just fine, and I only sort of got lost. When Adrianne took me to the cottage I was in for another surprise. I had expected to spend the weekend with her immediate family, but it was actually an extended family get-together with her dad’s side of the family. I don’t have the most pleasant, close-knit extended family, so I was a tad bit nervous about hers.
Within less than a day, my opinion of the trip had been turned on its head. Adrianne’s family were some of the nicest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met in my life. By the end of the weekend I was completely at ease. They made me feel like I was just another cousin. They were different from my dad’s family by how they interacted pleasantly with one another rather than everyone retreating to their own interests and picking on one another at every opportunity. They were different from my mom’s side of the family in their ability to completely relax without an itinerary or competition. I spent the weekend eating, chatting, playing cards (without keeping score), and enjoying the company of enjoyable people.
I headed back home from Adrianne’s house (I unexpectedly got to see her house and hometown after all) a refreshed and relaxed person. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a more relaxing weekend in my life. Not only did I get to be lazy, but I got to be lazy socially or non-socially as needed. I couldn’t have asked for a better weekend in the midst of an incredibly stressful few weeks.
The Thursday before I left I considered calling Adrianne and canceling my plans. I was insanely stressed out. Traveling always stresses me out, plus I was driving eight hours by myself to a place I had never been before to spend a week with a family (at this time I still thought that just meant immediate family) I barely knew (except for Adrianne). Plus I was still pulling together last-minute preparations for teaching VBS and the women’s group, NHCC’s VBS was lurking around the corner, I would soon need to put together a lesson for all of Joshua for the high school girls, etc. And then there was the whole wheelbarrow injury. I was just way too stressed out and terrified of driving alone for eight hours. But I decided to go anyway.
I arrived almost uneventfully. I started driving at the secondary dip in my Circadian rhythm, which was a horrible idea. I had to stop three times in the first two or three hours because I had a hard time staying awake. Once I came back to my normal self, the driving went smoothly. The toll road confusion worked itself out just fine, and I only sort of got lost. When Adrianne took me to the cottage I was in for another surprise. I had expected to spend the weekend with her immediate family, but it was actually an extended family get-together with her dad’s side of the family. I don’t have the most pleasant, close-knit extended family, so I was a tad bit nervous about hers.
Within less than a day, my opinion of the trip had been turned on its head. Adrianne’s family were some of the nicest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met in my life. By the end of the weekend I was completely at ease. They made me feel like I was just another cousin. They were different from my dad’s family by how they interacted pleasantly with one another rather than everyone retreating to their own interests and picking on one another at every opportunity. They were different from my mom’s side of the family in their ability to completely relax without an itinerary or competition. I spent the weekend eating, chatting, playing cards (without keeping score), and enjoying the company of enjoyable people.
I headed back home from Adrianne’s house (I unexpectedly got to see her house and hometown after all) a refreshed and relaxed person. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a more relaxing weekend in my life. Not only did I get to be lazy, but I got to be lazy socially or non-socially as needed. I couldn’t have asked for a better weekend in the midst of an incredibly stressful few weeks.
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.
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.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Midnight in Lockland
On Saturday night, I was in West Chester for a graduation party. Much to my delight and relief, I arrived without trouble. However, the ride home was a different story. As is my custom, I wound up rather lost in an unfamiliar area.
Around 11 PM I left West Chester with Amy and Joe. As you know, I absolutely despise driving on highways. Driving on highways in the dark is worse. Driving on highways in the dark on a route I've never taken is even worse. Driving on highways in the dark on a route I've never taken while wearing my glasses rather than my contacts is nearly the worst possible driving scenario I could imagine. Fortunately, I had two friends with me, and it turned out that Amy is excellent at getting un-lost and keeping me from freaking out. Joe didn't do me much good, but at least he didn't make anything worse. Before I even hit a main road, I had to pull over to calm myself down. I convinced myself that although my glasses didn't give me perfect vision, they were plenty good enough to allow to drive safely. I also called my dad to ask whether or not the headlights ever got fixed. They hadn't, which meant that my brights are the equivalent of any other car's normal headlights. I was afraid that I'd have to drive without my brights, and without them I can only see about ten feet in front of the car - and that's not an exaggeration. Amy helped with the calming down. After a few minutes and a switch of CDs (it was decided that Rimsky-Korsakov is much more calming than Apocalyptica), we were ready to go.
Merging onto 75 made me nervous, as usual, but as usual nothing bad happened. There was no cataclysmic ten-car pile-up. I'm getting more and more used to merging. The only real problem on the highway came when I couldn't find the white dashed line between my lane and the one next to me. I was not okay with that. After a moment of investigation, Amy discovered that I was still in a real lane. The dashed line had just been covered by road sealant stuff.
We were nearly home when I made a horrible mistake. I wasn't sure which exit to get off at, so when I saw the sign for the Lockland-Reading exit, I chose it. I've driven around in Reading plenty of times and Lockland a couple, so I was confident that I'd be able to find my way home. I was familiar with the intersection I found myself at, but I didn't remember exactly how to get home. I tried a couple possibilities, but I didn't seem to get closer to anywhere familiar enough that I could easily get home. We got into shadier and shadier parts of Lockland. Eventually it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to lock the car doors. When I talked to Kirby the next day, she informed that one of the streets I had spent a lot of time on was one that George had told her to never ever drive on at night under any circumstances. I thought about calling George since he lives in Lockland, but I decided against it. I'm not sure why. It would have been much wiser to call George. I suppose that my reluctance to ask for directions is part of what makes me Man-ria. I found my way back to the intersection we started at and pulled over to get out my GPS. It hadn't even occurred to me to use it until that point. We plugged it into the car and everything, but we couldn't get it to turn on. Amy and I both tried everything we could think of, but to no avail. We even looked for the instruction manual, but couldn't find it.
At Amy's insistence, we abandoned hope of finding our way through Lockland and got back on 75-south. The next exit we saw was for 562 - the Norwood Lateral. Amy and I thought that would get us back to Ronald Reagan. We were wrong. Our first mistake was that we got on going the wrong direction. We took the first exit we found to switch directions. The place where we got off was even shadier than any place we had encountered in Lockland. We spent about 100 yards on that road before getting back on 562 in the opposite direction which took us onto 75-north. Amy called her dad and was asking for him to Map-Quest the way home when I saw a sign for Ronald Reagan. The transition from 75 to Ronald Reagan to Galbraith was uneventful.
Instead of turning left on Galbraith like normal, Amy recommended that we take a short-cut to her house. So we turned right and took Congress Run. Up to this point, the inside of my windshield had gradually begun to fog up, and none of the usual methods were working to clear it off. I even tried wiping it with a towel, but that didn't help either. So I was stuck driving up Congress Run at night with a fogged-up windshield and without real brights. Congress Run is an insane street. Driving on it is an adventure - an adventure best reserved for sunny days. It's incredibly steep and narrow with hairpin turns screened by thick vegetation. It provided an entirely different sort of adventure than Lockland, although it was still an unpleasant adventure. After taking at least three times as long as it would normally take to drive down that street, we arrived at Compton and made it to her house without trouble. I dropped her off, drove Joe home, and returned to my home around 12:30 AM. What should have been a 20-30 minute drive turned into what may have been the scariest hour and a half of my life. I am now more determined than ever to learn how to get from place to place on the highways.
Around 11 PM I left West Chester with Amy and Joe. As you know, I absolutely despise driving on highways. Driving on highways in the dark is worse. Driving on highways in the dark on a route I've never taken is even worse. Driving on highways in the dark on a route I've never taken while wearing my glasses rather than my contacts is nearly the worst possible driving scenario I could imagine. Fortunately, I had two friends with me, and it turned out that Amy is excellent at getting un-lost and keeping me from freaking out. Joe didn't do me much good, but at least he didn't make anything worse. Before I even hit a main road, I had to pull over to calm myself down. I convinced myself that although my glasses didn't give me perfect vision, they were plenty good enough to allow to drive safely. I also called my dad to ask whether or not the headlights ever got fixed. They hadn't, which meant that my brights are the equivalent of any other car's normal headlights. I was afraid that I'd have to drive without my brights, and without them I can only see about ten feet in front of the car - and that's not an exaggeration. Amy helped with the calming down. After a few minutes and a switch of CDs (it was decided that Rimsky-Korsakov is much more calming than Apocalyptica), we were ready to go.
Merging onto 75 made me nervous, as usual, but as usual nothing bad happened. There was no cataclysmic ten-car pile-up. I'm getting more and more used to merging. The only real problem on the highway came when I couldn't find the white dashed line between my lane and the one next to me. I was not okay with that. After a moment of investigation, Amy discovered that I was still in a real lane. The dashed line had just been covered by road sealant stuff.
We were nearly home when I made a horrible mistake. I wasn't sure which exit to get off at, so when I saw the sign for the Lockland-Reading exit, I chose it. I've driven around in Reading plenty of times and Lockland a couple, so I was confident that I'd be able to find my way home. I was familiar with the intersection I found myself at, but I didn't remember exactly how to get home. I tried a couple possibilities, but I didn't seem to get closer to anywhere familiar enough that I could easily get home. We got into shadier and shadier parts of Lockland. Eventually it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to lock the car doors. When I talked to Kirby the next day, she informed that one of the streets I had spent a lot of time on was one that George had told her to never ever drive on at night under any circumstances. I thought about calling George since he lives in Lockland, but I decided against it. I'm not sure why. It would have been much wiser to call George. I suppose that my reluctance to ask for directions is part of what makes me Man-ria. I found my way back to the intersection we started at and pulled over to get out my GPS. It hadn't even occurred to me to use it until that point. We plugged it into the car and everything, but we couldn't get it to turn on. Amy and I both tried everything we could think of, but to no avail. We even looked for the instruction manual, but couldn't find it.
At Amy's insistence, we abandoned hope of finding our way through Lockland and got back on 75-south. The next exit we saw was for 562 - the Norwood Lateral. Amy and I thought that would get us back to Ronald Reagan. We were wrong. Our first mistake was that we got on going the wrong direction. We took the first exit we found to switch directions. The place where we got off was even shadier than any place we had encountered in Lockland. We spent about 100 yards on that road before getting back on 562 in the opposite direction which took us onto 75-north. Amy called her dad and was asking for him to Map-Quest the way home when I saw a sign for Ronald Reagan. The transition from 75 to Ronald Reagan to Galbraith was uneventful.
Instead of turning left on Galbraith like normal, Amy recommended that we take a short-cut to her house. So we turned right and took Congress Run. Up to this point, the inside of my windshield had gradually begun to fog up, and none of the usual methods were working to clear it off. I even tried wiping it with a towel, but that didn't help either. So I was stuck driving up Congress Run at night with a fogged-up windshield and without real brights. Congress Run is an insane street. Driving on it is an adventure - an adventure best reserved for sunny days. It's incredibly steep and narrow with hairpin turns screened by thick vegetation. It provided an entirely different sort of adventure than Lockland, although it was still an unpleasant adventure. After taking at least three times as long as it would normally take to drive down that street, we arrived at Compton and made it to her house without trouble. I dropped her off, drove Joe home, and returned to my home around 12:30 AM. What should have been a 20-30 minute drive turned into what may have been the scariest hour and a half of my life. I am now more determined than ever to learn how to get from place to place on the highways.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Appalachia Part V: Thursday
I now arrive at the conclusion of the Appalachia Adventures series. Soon I will be able to move on to other topics.
On Thursday morning, according to custom, we got up at 6:00 AM. It took some of us quite a while to get going. We pranked one of the guys' vans in reaction to their pranks, but ours wasn't nearly as good as theirs. Since we didn't have much time to plan or gather materials, we (by which I merely mean two of my friends and nobody else) used what we had: feminine products.
At the work site our roofing plans were foiled again because it was raining again. I helped put in some more dead-wood and insulation and watched a few people work on the siding, but there was nothing else to be worked on in the rain. Ivan (one of the carpenters) did his best to find little odd jobs for me to do since he could see that I wasn't very happy about sitting around not helping, and I thought that was very sweet of him.
During one of the long periods of time in which we had nothing to do, Boone told the tale of the truck wreck. A semi full of coal was careening around a curve at about 80 mph - on a wet road, might I add. At the same time, another semi was coming around the bend. The coal truck swerved to avoid the other truck. It clipped the other semi and then collided with the mountainside. The other semi suffered some damage, but the driver was uninjured. The coal truck, on the other hand, didn't fare as well. The cab was completely crushed and rescue crews spent the entire day picking up pieces of the driver that had been scattered along the road. At least he would have died instantly. We drove through there only about five or ten minutes after the accident. If we had left our site exactly when we were scheduled to, we could have been part of that accident.
We bid our final farewells to the carpenters and left the site at lunch again that day to go back to the cabins and pack. Everybody was ready to leave on time, but we couldn't go until the woman in charge of the organization came by to check that we were cleaned up and give us our COAP (Christian Outreach to Appalachian People - the organization we worked with) shirts. She was running more than an hour late, but we got to leave eventually.
My van was almost empty because I chose to ride with the teacher that everyone else was fed up with. We listened to 80's music and enjoyed some gorgeous clouds all the way home. Upon arriving at school and finding my luggage just in time for the college group study, I was called and informed that I would be picked up by Josh. By this point, most of my female friends had heard about this Josh guy of whom I was (and am) rather fond, so they were pretty excited to hear that he would be picking me up and they would get to see him. When he arrived, three of them decided that they would each carry one of my belongings as an excuse to walk over to his car. Unfortunately, it did not even occur to me until much later that they were hoping to be introduced to him. I'm not very good at that sort of thing.
So there you have it, Princess Gwendolyn Maple's Appalachian Adventures in five unnecessarily lengthy episodes.
On Thursday morning, according to custom, we got up at 6:00 AM. It took some of us quite a while to get going. We pranked one of the guys' vans in reaction to their pranks, but ours wasn't nearly as good as theirs. Since we didn't have much time to plan or gather materials, we (by which I merely mean two of my friends and nobody else) used what we had: feminine products.
At the work site our roofing plans were foiled again because it was raining again. I helped put in some more dead-wood and insulation and watched a few people work on the siding, but there was nothing else to be worked on in the rain. Ivan (one of the carpenters) did his best to find little odd jobs for me to do since he could see that I wasn't very happy about sitting around not helping, and I thought that was very sweet of him.
During one of the long periods of time in which we had nothing to do, Boone told the tale of the truck wreck. A semi full of coal was careening around a curve at about 80 mph - on a wet road, might I add. At the same time, another semi was coming around the bend. The coal truck swerved to avoid the other truck. It clipped the other semi and then collided with the mountainside. The other semi suffered some damage, but the driver was uninjured. The coal truck, on the other hand, didn't fare as well. The cab was completely crushed and rescue crews spent the entire day picking up pieces of the driver that had been scattered along the road. At least he would have died instantly. We drove through there only about five or ten minutes after the accident. If we had left our site exactly when we were scheduled to, we could have been part of that accident.
We bid our final farewells to the carpenters and left the site at lunch again that day to go back to the cabins and pack. Everybody was ready to leave on time, but we couldn't go until the woman in charge of the organization came by to check that we were cleaned up and give us our COAP (Christian Outreach to Appalachian People - the organization we worked with) shirts. She was running more than an hour late, but we got to leave eventually.
My van was almost empty because I chose to ride with the teacher that everyone else was fed up with. We listened to 80's music and enjoyed some gorgeous clouds all the way home. Upon arriving at school and finding my luggage just in time for the college group study, I was called and informed that I would be picked up by Josh. By this point, most of my female friends had heard about this Josh guy of whom I was (and am) rather fond, so they were pretty excited to hear that he would be picking me up and they would get to see him. When he arrived, three of them decided that they would each carry one of my belongings as an excuse to walk over to his car. Unfortunately, it did not even occur to me until much later that they were hoping to be introduced to him. I'm not very good at that sort of thing.
So there you have it, Princess Gwendolyn Maple's Appalachian Adventures in five unnecessarily lengthy episodes.
Appalachia Part IV: Wednesday
Just like on Monday and Tuesday, we got up early. Each morning there was less shine in our rise-and-shine routines. It was overcast and rainy on Wednesday, so we took even longer to get up and going.
Thanks to the rain, we couldn't work on the roof, so instead we had to find jobs inside the house for everyone. At first I got to help cut and install insulation. Fiberglass is no fun, but I managed to get far fewer fiberglass splinters than most of my comrades. After the insulation was done I got to climb up in the rafters and nail dead-wood into place. Dead-wood provides something for drywall to be anchored to.
The morning passed uneventfully. Instead of eating at the construction site and continuing work after lunch, we all headed back to the cabins to eat lunch and go sight-seeing. On the way to the cabins we passed a horrible semi truck wreck. We would learn the tale of the accident the next day.
Most us packed into the vans after lunch to visit the Coal Mine Museum. I made the mistake of riding in Ms. Owen's car. She drives like a madwoman. The museum was fascinating, but rather depressing as well. There were all sorts of stories about cave-ins and mining injuries.
One of the workers at the museum recommended that we visit Raven Rock in Kingdom Come State Park. Raven Rock was a ledge elevated a half-mile above the valley below, and the man told us that standing on the edge made you feel like you were flying. We decided that sounded like fun, so we drove off to the park. The winding roads up to the park were treacherous, and Mrs. Rivet in the front van decided that it was her turn to drive like a madwoman. Leah was about ready to puke or cry by the time we reached the parking lot up in the mountains.
From the parking lot, we hiked about a mile up steep trails (or, in the case of Maddy, me, and most of the guys, straight up the mountainsides with no interest in wimpy trails) to get to the place where the confusing signs told us we would find Raven Rock. Despite the fact that I hadn't had any sort of exercise in months, I managed to be the first girl to the top and took only one tiny break of about thirty seconds. I was breathing a little hard by the time I reached the top of the trail.
Unfortunately, we didn't see anything resembling Raven Rock. Everyone else in the first group turned around and headed back down the path, but I was determined to look around until I found this ledge. Eventually I succeeded. I shouted back to Courtney and Maddy - the only two that had stuck around from the second group - and they joined me. There was a pier-type thing with railings built onto a rocky outcropping on the side of a cliff. We walked to the railing at the end of the pier and looked out over the edge to see the half-mile drop straight down. It was breathtaking. Literally. For several seconds my head wouldn't stop spinning. It was awe-inspiring, even though the trees hadn't yet woken up from their winter slumber. Some day I'll go back when the trees are clad in summer leaves, autumn colours, or wintry snow. Near the ledge was a bench, and we decided to take Titanic pictures on it. It was a very blustery day, so the wind swept our hair back like in the movie. As we left Raven Rock we saw two ravens flying overhead. I have pictures of all these things on Facebook.
When we reached the top of the trail we realized that we were alone, we had no idea where anyone had gone, and our cell phones didn't have service. We started off down the trail in hopes of finding the others at the bottom. Partway down we heard familiar voices in the distance and followed them to discover our friends. They had apparently called our names for quite some time before giving up, and some of the girls were deeply distressed. Fortunately, Mr. Volz was able to reason that the three of us would be together and that we would take care of ourselves. In lieu of the real Raven Rock, they had found a bald mountainside. It was extremely windy up there, so much that one of my friends encouraged me to sit down because she was genuinely worried that I would fall over. I had no such worries, so I trotted on down through the rocks to where the guys were investigating a cave. Just as I got there, the clouds that had been steadily gathering took on a more menacing appearance, and we decided that the side of a mountain was not the best place to be in a storm. The guys and I decided that it would be quicker to skip the paths and take a short-cut. I know that this is generally not the best idea, but we made it through just fine with the exception of a few minor scrapes and scratches. We were back in the vans and partway down the mountain before the rain hit. I was sad not to be out in it, but I am forced to acknowledge that some things are unintelligent and unsafe and should probably not be done no matter how fun they seem or how completely unfrightened I feel.
We arrived back at the cabins without event. Here, my list of happening says "explosions." I have no idea whatsoever what that was referring to, so I'll skip to the next stuff. Several of us played cards after dinner again. First we played BS. I am atrociously horrible at that game, but my efforts provided amusement, so I consider that to be time well spent. I vanquished all challengers in a game of ERS once I was done failing at BS. When all the weaklings had given up, my friend Courtney and I decided to play a more extreme version of ERS. In our version, one must smack one's own forehead before smacking a sandwich. It added a whole new dimension to the game. We were both running on caffeine and adrenaline sans sleep by this point so we sort of frightened the few people who ventured out onto the porch where we were playing. It was great fun.
People stayed up late as usual. All but one of the guys had gone down to Sleepy Hollow and most of the girls had gone to bed when the guys played a prank on us. I must commend them for their work, because it was quite a nice series of pranks. They squirted ketchup onto pigs' feet (they found some at the local grocery store), tossed them onto the porch, knocked on the windows and the sides of the cabin, and left a ketchup handprint on the back window. Five or ten minutes later, they got into one of the vans and propped a stick between the steering wheel and the seat so that the stick was stuck pushing the horn. It was nicely done. But of course, we had to retaliate. Before going back to sleep we planned our prank for the next morning.
Thanks to the rain, we couldn't work on the roof, so instead we had to find jobs inside the house for everyone. At first I got to help cut and install insulation. Fiberglass is no fun, but I managed to get far fewer fiberglass splinters than most of my comrades. After the insulation was done I got to climb up in the rafters and nail dead-wood into place. Dead-wood provides something for drywall to be anchored to.
The morning passed uneventfully. Instead of eating at the construction site and continuing work after lunch, we all headed back to the cabins to eat lunch and go sight-seeing. On the way to the cabins we passed a horrible semi truck wreck. We would learn the tale of the accident the next day.
Most us packed into the vans after lunch to visit the Coal Mine Museum. I made the mistake of riding in Ms. Owen's car. She drives like a madwoman. The museum was fascinating, but rather depressing as well. There were all sorts of stories about cave-ins and mining injuries.
One of the workers at the museum recommended that we visit Raven Rock in Kingdom Come State Park. Raven Rock was a ledge elevated a half-mile above the valley below, and the man told us that standing on the edge made you feel like you were flying. We decided that sounded like fun, so we drove off to the park. The winding roads up to the park were treacherous, and Mrs. Rivet in the front van decided that it was her turn to drive like a madwoman. Leah was about ready to puke or cry by the time we reached the parking lot up in the mountains.
From the parking lot, we hiked about a mile up steep trails (or, in the case of Maddy, me, and most of the guys, straight up the mountainsides with no interest in wimpy trails) to get to the place where the confusing signs told us we would find Raven Rock. Despite the fact that I hadn't had any sort of exercise in months, I managed to be the first girl to the top and took only one tiny break of about thirty seconds. I was breathing a little hard by the time I reached the top of the trail.
Unfortunately, we didn't see anything resembling Raven Rock. Everyone else in the first group turned around and headed back down the path, but I was determined to look around until I found this ledge. Eventually I succeeded. I shouted back to Courtney and Maddy - the only two that had stuck around from the second group - and they joined me. There was a pier-type thing with railings built onto a rocky outcropping on the side of a cliff. We walked to the railing at the end of the pier and looked out over the edge to see the half-mile drop straight down. It was breathtaking. Literally. For several seconds my head wouldn't stop spinning. It was awe-inspiring, even though the trees hadn't yet woken up from their winter slumber. Some day I'll go back when the trees are clad in summer leaves, autumn colours, or wintry snow. Near the ledge was a bench, and we decided to take Titanic pictures on it. It was a very blustery day, so the wind swept our hair back like in the movie. As we left Raven Rock we saw two ravens flying overhead. I have pictures of all these things on Facebook.
When we reached the top of the trail we realized that we were alone, we had no idea where anyone had gone, and our cell phones didn't have service. We started off down the trail in hopes of finding the others at the bottom. Partway down we heard familiar voices in the distance and followed them to discover our friends. They had apparently called our names for quite some time before giving up, and some of the girls were deeply distressed. Fortunately, Mr. Volz was able to reason that the three of us would be together and that we would take care of ourselves. In lieu of the real Raven Rock, they had found a bald mountainside. It was extremely windy up there, so much that one of my friends encouraged me to sit down because she was genuinely worried that I would fall over. I had no such worries, so I trotted on down through the rocks to where the guys were investigating a cave. Just as I got there, the clouds that had been steadily gathering took on a more menacing appearance, and we decided that the side of a mountain was not the best place to be in a storm. The guys and I decided that it would be quicker to skip the paths and take a short-cut. I know that this is generally not the best idea, but we made it through just fine with the exception of a few minor scrapes and scratches. We were back in the vans and partway down the mountain before the rain hit. I was sad not to be out in it, but I am forced to acknowledge that some things are unintelligent and unsafe and should probably not be done no matter how fun they seem or how completely unfrightened I feel.
We arrived back at the cabins without event. Here, my list of happening says "explosions." I have no idea whatsoever what that was referring to, so I'll skip to the next stuff. Several of us played cards after dinner again. First we played BS. I am atrociously horrible at that game, but my efforts provided amusement, so I consider that to be time well spent. I vanquished all challengers in a game of ERS once I was done failing at BS. When all the weaklings had given up, my friend Courtney and I decided to play a more extreme version of ERS. In our version, one must smack one's own forehead before smacking a sandwich. It added a whole new dimension to the game. We were both running on caffeine and adrenaline sans sleep by this point so we sort of frightened the few people who ventured out onto the porch where we were playing. It was great fun.
People stayed up late as usual. All but one of the guys had gone down to Sleepy Hollow and most of the girls had gone to bed when the guys played a prank on us. I must commend them for their work, because it was quite a nice series of pranks. They squirted ketchup onto pigs' feet (they found some at the local grocery store), tossed them onto the porch, knocked on the windows and the sides of the cabin, and left a ketchup handprint on the back window. Five or ten minutes later, they got into one of the vans and propped a stick between the steering wheel and the seat so that the stick was stuck pushing the horn. It was nicely done. But of course, we had to retaliate. Before going back to sleep we planned our prank for the next morning.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Appalachia Part III: Tuesday
Sorry for the long silence. I have about six posts partially finished, so I should be putting a lot more up in the near future.
Tuesday morning started at the early hour of 6:00 AM just like Monday did. It took a few more hits of the snooze button to wake everyone up, and the PBJ sandwich-making brigade was a little slow to get moving, but we were at the work site by 7:30. Once again, the natives were running a little behind schedule. It was chilly outside in the mountain morning air, so we stayed in our cozy vans until the carpenters arrived.
When the carpenters did arrive, the roofing team had to sit around doing nothing until the sun dried the dew off the roof. As the house was near the bottom of a valley, it took some time for the sun to reach us. In the meantime, I sat in the open trunk of a van and did nothing. I hate doing nothing while other people are working. It drives me insane. However, I didn't have many options so I just had to deal with it.
Once the little rays of sunshine finally hit the rooftop of our little valley house, it didn't take long for the tar paper and shingles to dry off enough for us to walk safely on them. The morning was spent nailing on more shingles, frightening 2x6 supports, and rain guards. Thanks to my perfectionism and shingling skill (it really doesn't take much to become a skilled shingler, but I'm proud of my new-found ability nonetheless), I was promoted to row-starter. The first shingle in a new row must be lined up so perfectly that it splits the one-eighth-inch mark of a chalk line in half. I've finally found the one thing that really does require absolute perfectionism.
Lunch brought a few items of interest. A wandering beagle found and befriended us, and we named him Shiloh after the books about Shiloh the beagle. Evidently it's common for Harlan dwellers to let their dogs roam the community during the day. The dogs almost always make it back home in time for dinner without trouble. Towards the end of lunch, a man a few doors down the hill from our site walked out of his house carrying a rifle. Billy voiced the opinion that the man looked to be a little messed-up, by which he seemed to mean drunk. The man proceeded to shoot the rifle at some unknown object. Nobody in the neighborhood was disturbed in the least. We found that a little odd.
The afternoon brought more shingles, bigger blisters, and little else. As the roof crew climbed back down the ladder, I realized that I hadn't used sunscreen the entire day, and to my surprise I hadn't sizzled like an egg on hot pavement. It was a pleasant surprise.
Back at the cabin, I decided against an early shower in favor of taking my camera, Orthodoxy, and The Great Omission on a hike up to the rock formation on the ridge near the cabin. This time I had the rock to myself, and it was marvelously tranquil and absolutely lovely. I benefited from the break from people and noise. Todd was right about the benefits of silence and solitude. As much as I loved many of the people I went with, I can only stand so much non-stop human contact.
I came back down to discover that my friends from the other work site and my one friend from my site were going on a walk down the mountain into Sleepy Hollow where the boys' cabins were. I think one of the girls wanted to play basketball, but I don't fully remember the reason for the trip; we never actually made it there. The road from the girls' cabin to the boys' cabin zig-zagged across the grass-covered face of the mountain. We speed-walked most of the way down the road, and then realized that we needed something back up in the cabin. Charity and I decided to hike through the grass straight up the mountainside instead of using the road. We made it, but she was on the verge of asthmatic breathing problems, and I had a hard time not slipping thanks to the fact that my foam flip-flops had gotten soaked. Once we did whatever we needed to, we speed-walked all the way down almost to the boys' cabin. Just as we started down their driveway, one of the teachers pulled up to pick up some of the guys. and he told us that it was dinner time. He offered to give us a ride, but I decided that I wanted to see if I could run up the road and beat him. After about 100 yards, I was the only person still in favor of that idea, so instead we sat in the middle of the road and waited to be picked up. We opened the trunk and all squeezed into the back and sang along to The Killers on the way up the hill/mountain.
Dinner was a delicious grill-out followed by some cards. Between cards and bedtime I sat around the fire with people I didn't normally talk to, and it was actually very nice. I heard lots of interesting stories and had some lovely conversations. It would be nice if I could remember any of them, but right now I'm proud for remembering this much (I haven't really remembered all this for this long. I made lists on the way home. If I had actually remembered this all several weeks after the fact, I'd be shocked).
Tuesday morning started at the early hour of 6:00 AM just like Monday did. It took a few more hits of the snooze button to wake everyone up, and the PBJ sandwich-making brigade was a little slow to get moving, but we were at the work site by 7:30. Once again, the natives were running a little behind schedule. It was chilly outside in the mountain morning air, so we stayed in our cozy vans until the carpenters arrived.
When the carpenters did arrive, the roofing team had to sit around doing nothing until the sun dried the dew off the roof. As the house was near the bottom of a valley, it took some time for the sun to reach us. In the meantime, I sat in the open trunk of a van and did nothing. I hate doing nothing while other people are working. It drives me insane. However, I didn't have many options so I just had to deal with it.
Once the little rays of sunshine finally hit the rooftop of our little valley house, it didn't take long for the tar paper and shingles to dry off enough for us to walk safely on them. The morning was spent nailing on more shingles, frightening 2x6 supports, and rain guards. Thanks to my perfectionism and shingling skill (it really doesn't take much to become a skilled shingler, but I'm proud of my new-found ability nonetheless), I was promoted to row-starter. The first shingle in a new row must be lined up so perfectly that it splits the one-eighth-inch mark of a chalk line in half. I've finally found the one thing that really does require absolute perfectionism.
Lunch brought a few items of interest. A wandering beagle found and befriended us, and we named him Shiloh after the books about Shiloh the beagle. Evidently it's common for Harlan dwellers to let their dogs roam the community during the day. The dogs almost always make it back home in time for dinner without trouble. Towards the end of lunch, a man a few doors down the hill from our site walked out of his house carrying a rifle. Billy voiced the opinion that the man looked to be a little messed-up, by which he seemed to mean drunk. The man proceeded to shoot the rifle at some unknown object. Nobody in the neighborhood was disturbed in the least. We found that a little odd.
The afternoon brought more shingles, bigger blisters, and little else. As the roof crew climbed back down the ladder, I realized that I hadn't used sunscreen the entire day, and to my surprise I hadn't sizzled like an egg on hot pavement. It was a pleasant surprise.
Back at the cabin, I decided against an early shower in favor of taking my camera, Orthodoxy, and The Great Omission on a hike up to the rock formation on the ridge near the cabin. This time I had the rock to myself, and it was marvelously tranquil and absolutely lovely. I benefited from the break from people and noise. Todd was right about the benefits of silence and solitude. As much as I loved many of the people I went with, I can only stand so much non-stop human contact.
I came back down to discover that my friends from the other work site and my one friend from my site were going on a walk down the mountain into Sleepy Hollow where the boys' cabins were. I think one of the girls wanted to play basketball, but I don't fully remember the reason for the trip; we never actually made it there. The road from the girls' cabin to the boys' cabin zig-zagged across the grass-covered face of the mountain. We speed-walked most of the way down the road, and then realized that we needed something back up in the cabin. Charity and I decided to hike through the grass straight up the mountainside instead of using the road. We made it, but she was on the verge of asthmatic breathing problems, and I had a hard time not slipping thanks to the fact that my foam flip-flops had gotten soaked. Once we did whatever we needed to, we speed-walked all the way down almost to the boys' cabin. Just as we started down their driveway, one of the teachers pulled up to pick up some of the guys. and he told us that it was dinner time. He offered to give us a ride, but I decided that I wanted to see if I could run up the road and beat him. After about 100 yards, I was the only person still in favor of that idea, so instead we sat in the middle of the road and waited to be picked up. We opened the trunk and all squeezed into the back and sang along to The Killers on the way up the hill/mountain.
Dinner was a delicious grill-out followed by some cards. Between cards and bedtime I sat around the fire with people I didn't normally talk to, and it was actually very nice. I heard lots of interesting stories and had some lovely conversations. It would be nice if I could remember any of them, but right now I'm proud for remembering this much (I haven't really remembered all this for this long. I made lists on the way home. If I had actually remembered this all several weeks after the fact, I'd be shocked).
Monday, April 6, 2009
Appalachia Part I: Sunday
If I post then entire account of my Appalachia trip at once, I won't get around to finishing it until at least a few weeks from now. Instead, I'll post it in chunks - one for each day of the trip.
On Sunday Courtney picked me up from church early. When we arrived at school, I helped Leah's dad pack the vans. We make an efficient packing team. Unfortunately, the people were packed awfully close, too. My van had nine people and eight seat belts. I got to sit in the middle of the back row. Aside from a few panicky moments early on, I was surprised to find that I didn't have a serious problem with the crowdedness.
We arrived at our cabin at around 6:00 or 7:00, thanks to the unnecessarily extended stops and the late start. The girls' "cabin" was very nice (depending on your definition). It was hardly a cabin, really. It was all clean and new and polished will real mattresses and Perggo floors... but temporarily with no running water. The view out the door was absolutely gorgeous. I'll have a picture of it up on Facebook eventually. The girl's cabin was partway up a mountainside and hemmed in by ridges on three sides. On one of these ridges was an interesting rock formation that begged to be climbed. Maddy went along with me all the way to the top through thorns and brush. Thanks to my short legs, I couldn't find a way up the rock at the time, but Maddy did.
Before leaving for dinner and grocery shopping, us girls went down to the valley below our cabin to see where the guy were staying. I preferred their cabin. They stayed in a historic cabin with low ceilings, unfinished walls, and furniture from the 70s. It was rather dim and somewhat grungy, but it had a nice, homey feel full of character and warmth that the pristine girls' cabin lacked.
After we had all loaded back into the vans, we headed out to Pizza Hut for dinner. From Pizza Hut, we went to Food City to do our grocery shopping for the week. Emily and I were sent to the produce department, but we were distracted for several minutes my some delightfully scented candles. There were so many different smells to test! Later on, some of my friends and I met up in a freezer aisle and decided we were tired of shopping for the time being, so we sat down and played charades instead. It was much more fun.
When we were done at Food City, we finally returned back to the cabins at roughly 9:00 or 10:00. I could see the stars clearly. I only know two constellations, but I found them effortlessly. Ursa Major and Orion's Belt seemed huge up there! I hadn't seen them clearly since October, so I'm not sure if the perceived size discrepancy was due to season or elevation. I did not admire the stars for long because I did not want to feel obligated to pretend to associate with my more boisterous classmates who were outside at the time.
On Sunday Courtney picked me up from church early. When we arrived at school, I helped Leah's dad pack the vans. We make an efficient packing team. Unfortunately, the people were packed awfully close, too. My van had nine people and eight seat belts. I got to sit in the middle of the back row. Aside from a few panicky moments early on, I was surprised to find that I didn't have a serious problem with the crowdedness.
We arrived at our cabin at around 6:00 or 7:00, thanks to the unnecessarily extended stops and the late start. The girls' "cabin" was very nice (depending on your definition). It was hardly a cabin, really. It was all clean and new and polished will real mattresses and Perggo floors... but temporarily with no running water. The view out the door was absolutely gorgeous. I'll have a picture of it up on Facebook eventually. The girl's cabin was partway up a mountainside and hemmed in by ridges on three sides. On one of these ridges was an interesting rock formation that begged to be climbed. Maddy went along with me all the way to the top through thorns and brush. Thanks to my short legs, I couldn't find a way up the rock at the time, but Maddy did.
Before leaving for dinner and grocery shopping, us girls went down to the valley below our cabin to see where the guy were staying. I preferred their cabin. They stayed in a historic cabin with low ceilings, unfinished walls, and furniture from the 70s. It was rather dim and somewhat grungy, but it had a nice, homey feel full of character and warmth that the pristine girls' cabin lacked.
After we had all loaded back into the vans, we headed out to Pizza Hut for dinner. From Pizza Hut, we went to Food City to do our grocery shopping for the week. Emily and I were sent to the produce department, but we were distracted for several minutes my some delightfully scented candles. There were so many different smells to test! Later on, some of my friends and I met up in a freezer aisle and decided we were tired of shopping for the time being, so we sat down and played charades instead. It was much more fun.
When we were done at Food City, we finally returned back to the cabins at roughly 9:00 or 10:00. I could see the stars clearly. I only know two constellations, but I found them effortlessly. Ursa Major and Orion's Belt seemed huge up there! I hadn't seen them clearly since October, so I'm not sure if the perceived size discrepancy was due to season or elevation. I did not admire the stars for long because I did not want to feel obligated to pretend to associate with my more boisterous classmates who were outside at the time.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Adventures in Rural Indiana
Once upon a time (by which I mean more than a month ago by now), four brave adventurers set out on what was destined to become a memorable journey filled with curious sights and experiences...
After we picked up Seth and Anna/Betsy, we left UC and got on the highway. The grass beside one of the earlier highways was strewn with garbage galore. It was depressing. I avoided looking at it. We passed one of those houses with horrible kitschy lawn ornaments covering the front yard. At one point, Seth spotted what appeared to be a real monkey sitting on a picnic table. Throughout the trip we played roadkill bingo. Or at least I did. I saw (and circled in red pen, incidentally) a squirrel, a rabbit, a tire, a groundhog, a dog, a raccoon, a cat, and several mysterious masses of mangled flesh in addition to smelling a dead skunk.
Here's what I remember about the Indiana trip that Anna/Betsy, Seth, Josh, and I took a few weeks ago. The events within each paragraph are probably not in the proper order, but all the events in one paragraph followed those in the preceding paragraph and came before the ones in the next.
After we picked up Seth and Anna/Betsy, we left UC and got on the highway. The grass beside one of the earlier highways was strewn with garbage galore. It was depressing. I avoided looking at it. We passed one of those houses with horrible kitschy lawn ornaments covering the front yard. At one point, Seth spotted what appeared to be a real monkey sitting on a picnic table. Throughout the trip we played roadkill bingo. Or at least I did. I saw (and circled in red pen, incidentally) a squirrel, a rabbit, a tire, a groundhog, a dog, a raccoon, a cat, and several mysterious masses of mangled flesh in addition to smelling a dead skunk.
Once we got to downtown Anderson, the real adventures started. Downtown Anderson was a very shady place. It even has a Shadyside Memorial Park, which I will get to in a moment. The GPS led us astray, and told us to turn onto this ultra shady back street. It was mildly frightening. When we tried to get off of that street, we nearly had a nasty run-in with a huge pick-up truck. Apparently he didn't have a stop sign. We decided to stop to ask for directions, so we pulled into Shadyside Memorial Park. At the entrance there were these horrid little stone pillar things. They tried to look nice, but they failed miserably. It made me sad to look at them, so I turned away. Nobody was in the park... except for some guy sitting in his car in the parking lot near the playground. Drug dealer? Pedophile? Who knows. All I know is that he fit very well into the general mood of downtown Anderson. We were supposed to be going north, but evidently we were going south. I didn't know that. Normally, the GPS shows the car driving towards to top of the screen. At the top of the screen was North Anderson, so I assumed that we were going north. However, if I had looked at the little car, I would have realized that it was driving towards the bottom of the screen, meaning that we were going south. It took me a while to notice that, so I kept objecting every time Josh tried to turn around. I'm not sure how much time my confusion added to the trip. We didn't reset the GPS with the new directions, so it kept on telling us to make a u-turn.
The return trip provided even more excitement. We became lost again. The GPS's directions had us driving in the middle of nowhere for quite some time. Maybe it wanted revenge for all the times we refused to make a u-turn, despite its protests. Most of the time, we were on hilly roads barely wide enough for two cars to pass abreast. As we crested each hill, we feared that we would find another car about to collide with us. Fortunately, there were no accidents. In fact, we rarely saw any signs of real civilization whatsoever. It was kind of creepy. Due to excessive exhaustion combined with the most caffeine I've ever consumed in a day, I was slap-happy the entire time. It made the drive even more interesting for me. At one point, I burst out laughing and finally managed to communicate that I was amused by the fact that we hadn't driven on a lined road in a long time. Normally, that wouldn't have been that funny, but caffeine + fatigue = all sorts of interesting thoughts. Throughout the landscape dotted with lonely buildings and grotesque, leafless trees were little cement monoliths of mystery. They were all over the place, and we couldn't figure out what on earth they might be. There was also an old, mostly destroyed tower-ish structure. I don't remember what it was, or if we found out what it was at all. For part of the countryside ride, we listened to Captain Beefheart. I tried brainstorming for an essay while it was playing. That didn't go as well as it could have. Thank goodness Josh stopped it somewhere near track 13. I can only take so much Beefheart. We stopped for a bathroom break as soon as we saw signs of civilization. Raleigh, IN, was hardly civilization, but it was something. The greasy diner place we stopped at was interesting. They sold cans of beans. They sold other things too, but I only remember the cans of beans. There was a layer of grease on the countertop. Betsy/Anna was the only one brave enough to use the bathroom hidden away in the furnace room. As we left, we heard the locals chuckling. They were probably laughing at us city folk, and I don't blame them. We stopped again later in Metamora at the Hav-A-Bite, and that was a much nicer experience. Well, maybe not for Seth, but he said he felt much better after throwing up. Next to the bathrooms was a poster of the "little houses of Metamora." The distinguishing feature of the town was Mt. Metamora. Mt. Metamora was a large hill with a small building of mystery perching atop it. The building had a cross on the side, so maybe it was a church or a monastery of some sort. The hill was covered in dead grass with a few gnarled trees. Someone suggested that it may have been a landfill at one point. Relatively close to the time we finally made it back to the highway, there was a railroad along the road and a canal next to that. It made me smile. We were driving alongside the evolution of technology. After a while, we got on the highway. At some point during the trip back home, we saw a yard with live llamas in it. I have no idea where this fits in with the chronology of events. That's all.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
In Which I Become Hopelessly Lost (Again) and Attend Homecoming
Yesterday was the homecoming dance. I hate dances. I really do. But for some reason I decided to try one again this year. For the first time in five years I wore a dress in public. For the first time in my life I wore high heels. Most surprising of all, I actually liked my dress. It was about as Maria-ish as a dress can be. On more than one occasion, I was told that I looked like a woodland fairy or a nymph.
I wouldn't even have considered going if it hadn't been for the group I went with. It included eighteen delightful people. I was one of the many drivers getting us all to dinner, but if I had known what getting there would involve, I would never have agreed to drive. I didn't even read the directions I was given before we left. I entrusted them to my front seat passenger and planned on following the person who knew where she was going. We lost said person when we got on the highway. I did not know we were going to drive on a highway. As you already know, I hate highways. Then we got onto another highway. That other highway was I-71 (which fortunately was not as frightening as it was when I had my temps). Then we got onto a smallish highway-esque road. All three had plenty of traffic. I was not happy at all. Once we finally got off the highways, we caught back up to the front driver. We promptly lost her once more when she decided to speed through a yellow light. After this, we got completely lost. The people following us also got lost. We found ourselves about to get onto I-71 again, but just in time we turned onto a narrow side street and got back on track. Eventually we arrived at our dinner destination. Dinner was a lot of fun.
On the way back, we resolved to drive closer together, and the leader promised to drive as though she was being followed by clueless people. Before we even left the parking lot, we lost one of the four cars in our caravan. Once we were all on the highway, we got off at the wrong exit and were lost again. We pulled over at what turned out to be a school of some sort with an awesome playground. It was castle-themed and included a dragon and a ship. Most of us got out and played on the playground while the head of the caravan called her dad and asked for direction. I declared myself captain of the ship, but did not manage to enlist many crew members before we departed.
Once we left, we had to take a detour to find a bathroom. After we left the Gold Star where we stopped, I got separated from the other two cars and was lost again. Several roads later, we somehow ended up behind the other two cars without knowing it. When they stopped to wait for us, we passed them. We couldn't really turn around very easily, but at that point they discovered that we were on North Bend Road and we figured that we could get to the school easily enough from there.
We were wrong. We wound up being moderately lost and debating whether or not we should leave our path and pursue a new one that we thought we recognized. We turned around and returned to the place we thought we knew, and eventually one of my passengers recognized where we were even in the darkness. In the end, we found our way to the school. We arrived just in time to be admitted to the dance.
For the entire duration of the ride to and from Buca di Beppos or wherever we ate, I was quite angry and on the verge of panic. We were driving in the dark on highways, people kept cutting me off (I nearly cussed a few of these drivers out), I was forced to do some risky driving to keep up with everyone, and there were a few other things that made me less than happy. Surprisingly, the fact that we were lost wasn't as terrifying as it has been in the past; I've gotten so used to it that I enjoy it as an adventure, so long as I have passengers with me. When I get angry while driving I just become a source of amusement to my passengers which in turn calms me down. When I'm lost and alone, I just panic. It also helped that most of the songs that came up when I pushed shuffle on my ipod were perfect for the situation. During the long stretch of time we spent driving with uncertainty down what was supposed to be North Bend (I'm not confident that it really was North Bend), The Long and Winding Road played, and we all had to laugh at the correlation between the title and our current predicament.
Homecoming itself wasn't that great. In fact, it was decidedly not great. That's all I have to say on the matter. I left early, and for the ride home I rolled down all my windows and put one of my favorite songs on repeat (it fits pretty much every mood I have, and it was particularly fitting at the time). That final drive was wonderfully refreshing, especially in contrast to my driving adventures earlier in the day.
I wouldn't even have considered going if it hadn't been for the group I went with. It included eighteen delightful people. I was one of the many drivers getting us all to dinner, but if I had known what getting there would involve, I would never have agreed to drive. I didn't even read the directions I was given before we left. I entrusted them to my front seat passenger and planned on following the person who knew where she was going. We lost said person when we got on the highway. I did not know we were going to drive on a highway. As you already know, I hate highways. Then we got onto another highway. That other highway was I-71 (which fortunately was not as frightening as it was when I had my temps). Then we got onto a smallish highway-esque road. All three had plenty of traffic. I was not happy at all. Once we finally got off the highways, we caught back up to the front driver. We promptly lost her once more when she decided to speed through a yellow light. After this, we got completely lost. The people following us also got lost. We found ourselves about to get onto I-71 again, but just in time we turned onto a narrow side street and got back on track. Eventually we arrived at our dinner destination. Dinner was a lot of fun.
On the way back, we resolved to drive closer together, and the leader promised to drive as though she was being followed by clueless people. Before we even left the parking lot, we lost one of the four cars in our caravan. Once we were all on the highway, we got off at the wrong exit and were lost again. We pulled over at what turned out to be a school of some sort with an awesome playground. It was castle-themed and included a dragon and a ship. Most of us got out and played on the playground while the head of the caravan called her dad and asked for direction. I declared myself captain of the ship, but did not manage to enlist many crew members before we departed.
Once we left, we had to take a detour to find a bathroom. After we left the Gold Star where we stopped, I got separated from the other two cars and was lost again. Several roads later, we somehow ended up behind the other two cars without knowing it. When they stopped to wait for us, we passed them. We couldn't really turn around very easily, but at that point they discovered that we were on North Bend Road and we figured that we could get to the school easily enough from there.
We were wrong. We wound up being moderately lost and debating whether or not we should leave our path and pursue a new one that we thought we recognized. We turned around and returned to the place we thought we knew, and eventually one of my passengers recognized where we were even in the darkness. In the end, we found our way to the school. We arrived just in time to be admitted to the dance.
For the entire duration of the ride to and from Buca di Beppos or wherever we ate, I was quite angry and on the verge of panic. We were driving in the dark on highways, people kept cutting me off (I nearly cussed a few of these drivers out), I was forced to do some risky driving to keep up with everyone, and there were a few other things that made me less than happy. Surprisingly, the fact that we were lost wasn't as terrifying as it has been in the past; I've gotten so used to it that I enjoy it as an adventure, so long as I have passengers with me. When I get angry while driving I just become a source of amusement to my passengers which in turn calms me down. When I'm lost and alone, I just panic. It also helped that most of the songs that came up when I pushed shuffle on my ipod were perfect for the situation. During the long stretch of time we spent driving with uncertainty down what was supposed to be North Bend (I'm not confident that it really was North Bend), The Long and Winding Road played, and we all had to laugh at the correlation between the title and our current predicament.
Homecoming itself wasn't that great. In fact, it was decidedly not great. That's all I have to say on the matter. I left early, and for the ride home I rolled down all my windows and put one of my favorite songs on repeat (it fits pretty much every mood I have, and it was particularly fitting at the time). That final drive was wonderfully refreshing, especially in contrast to my driving adventures earlier in the day.
Monday, September 29, 2008
More Adventures in Driving
These two adventures are more like un-adventures in driving, but they mark what could be a turning point in my navigational skills.
Saturday, it was my task to get to West Chester to watch Ronda and some others perform at a concert. Not only had I never driven to West Chester before, but I had to get there via highway. And one of those highways was one I had never driven on before (I-75). However, wonder of wonders, I managed to get there without getting the least bit lost! I also managed to get home without getting lost, but that was only because I called my parents to see if I had in mind the correct way to get home. I did not have in mind the correct way to get home. That potential crisis was averted.
On Sunday, I got my senior pictures taken. The outside pictures were taken at Spring Grove Cemetery, and once we were finished there I was to follow Annette (my photographer) to her house for some inside pictures. The only thing I hate more than trying to drive to a new place is following someone to a new place. We got onto I-75 during rush hour and ended up getting split up. I just barely noticed in time when she got off on an exit and ended I-75 ordeal number three. The rest of the drive to her house was uneventful. But then I had to get back home. She gave me clear directions to I-75, but once I got on I realized that I had no idea where I was. I tried calling home, but my parents were gone. I decided to try it alone, even though I was on the verge of panic. I found an exit onto Ronald Reagan, and figured that I could find some way home once I was on a familiar highway, and I ended up at a spot that I knew well. I-75 ordeal number four had been successfully completed!
I may have finally begun to overcome my inability to drive to new places without getting hopelessly lost!
Saturday, it was my task to get to West Chester to watch Ronda and some others perform at a concert. Not only had I never driven to West Chester before, but I had to get there via highway. And one of those highways was one I had never driven on before (I-75). However, wonder of wonders, I managed to get there without getting the least bit lost! I also managed to get home without getting lost, but that was only because I called my parents to see if I had in mind the correct way to get home. I did not have in mind the correct way to get home. That potential crisis was averted.
On Sunday, I got my senior pictures taken. The outside pictures were taken at Spring Grove Cemetery, and once we were finished there I was to follow Annette (my photographer) to her house for some inside pictures. The only thing I hate more than trying to drive to a new place is following someone to a new place. We got onto I-75 during rush hour and ended up getting split up. I just barely noticed in time when she got off on an exit and ended I-75 ordeal number three. The rest of the drive to her house was uneventful. But then I had to get back home. She gave me clear directions to I-75, but once I got on I realized that I had no idea where I was. I tried calling home, but my parents were gone. I decided to try it alone, even though I was on the verge of panic. I found an exit onto Ronald Reagan, and figured that I could find some way home once I was on a familiar highway, and I ended up at a spot that I knew well. I-75 ordeal number four had been successfully completed!
I may have finally begun to overcome my inability to drive to new places without getting hopelessly lost!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Red Car
I drive the red car. Note that I do not call it my car. It is not mine. I would not have bought that car. It does not fit me personally at all, but I could live with that if it didn't have such a vast quantity of problems. I once gave Stephanie/Alex/Alephanie/Stephalex (take your pick) a ride home, and he made the following accurate observation: "It sounds like your car is falling apart as you drive it."
It is red. Red is, by far, my least favorite color. And the red car is, well, redder than the reddest red times infinity. All of my readers have seen the red exterior. Some of them have looked into the car and observed that every bit of the interior is also red, with a few bits of chrome and black.
The air conditioning does not work. Most of the time I can deal with this. My windows are pretty much perpetually rolled down. However, there are some days when the atmosphere is so vilely hot and humid that having the windows rolled down is not enough. Then there are the rainy days. I am more than happy to leave my windows down while I drive in the rain, but my passengers don't always share that sentiment. In addition, when I drive on the highway with my windows down my hair flies in my face and I can't hear my music.
It literally stinks. It's not bad when it's completely dry, but if too much rain gets inside, I'm doomed to endure a strange musty scent faintly reminiscent of stale pop-tarts. This can last for days or weeks, depending on how much water the seats and carpet absorbed. Closing the windows after it's already been raining for quite some time (my dad does this all the time) makes the smell nearly unbearable when the doors are opened again. I have an air freshener, but it's taking its time in doing what it does. My air is much fresher than it was a few days ago, but I still dread driving it after it has spent the day in the sunny school parking lot with the windows rolled up.
The stereo and radio are completely out of whack. The front passenger speakers don't work. Normally. On occasion they will roar to life when least expected. This isn't really a big issue for most songs, but there are some songs that have certain sounds coming from each side, so you don't get the full expreience unless all the speakers are working. Sometimes the radio flat out dies, only to rise once more anywhere between a few seconds and a few days later. The first time it happened, I had no clue what was going on. I tried turning the volume on the radio all the way up. I tried turning the volume on my ipod all the way up (I listen to my ipod rather than the radio). I tried skipping forward and backward on the playlist. About a minute after it had died, it came back. I had not yet turned down the radio or the ipod, and the song that came on started with a loud yell/scream noise. Jonathon and I jumped (maybe that's an understatement). Every time the song starts we laugh. Ask him about it sometime, and I'm sure you'll get some exciting and elaborate tale.
The seat does not come up very far. It comes up far enough that I have a perfectly safe view of the road, but it's low enough that people can barely see me over the steering wheel and low enough to render the sun blocking apparatus completely useless. Despite the sheer awesomeness of my sunglasses, they aren't dark enough to ward off much of the sun's mighty glare.
The hood will not open. Or at least I can't get it to open anymore. I've watched people open it, and I've opened it myself in the past, but it will no longer open for me. I kind of really need to refill on windshield wiper fluid. I can't completely blame the car for this until I ask someone else to try to open it, but I really do believe, based on how it's behaving, that something is jammed in the simple mechanism that normally allows one to open the hood.
From time to time, the rearview mirror will fall off of the windshield. This is obviously dangerous and unnerving.
The alternator recently gave up on life. Fortunately, it was easily repaired, but I don't know how long that will last. I like being able to start the red car.
It makes strange noises. We call it the cricket car, because the sound it constantly emits sounds somewhat like a herd of crickets (do crickets come in herds?). We've tried replacing all sorts of bands and belts, but nothing keeps the crickets quiet for long. It can get really annoying. When turning left, oftentimes it sounds like a turning podracer. I like this noise, but I have no idea why it happens and that makes me nervous.
The speedometer is off. However, once I figured out that I was really going 3-5 mph slower than it was telling me, I had no issue adjusting.
The gas gauge doesn't work. It normally tells me that my tank is either full or way below empty. I have to watch the odometer instead and reset it every time I fill the tank. This means that I can't fill the tank only partially, for I will have no idea when to refill it if I do so.
Now, the engine is unhappy. When I push the gas pedal, the engine wills to disbelieve that I am pushing it as hard as I am. Sometimes it disbelieves that I am pushing the pedal at all. Then it snaps back into reality and jerks forward. To anyone listening to the engine or monitoring my speed, it would sound and look like I was pumping the gas pedal. It normally only does this for the first several seconds after I stop or apply the brakes. Yesterday, it was so bad that I was surprised to have made it home.
Even though my mom and I know that the poor red car needs to be put out of its misery, my dad is in denial of that fact. He believes that it's not as bad as I say it is, or that it can easily be fixed. To be fair, all of our cars have been nicer to him than to anyone else (someday I might tell tales about my mother and the demented car), so he really isn't getting the full effect. But he also develops attachments to cars and hates to give up on them until they're completely dead. Or until they catch on fire. That happened once, after my mom had insisted that something was amiss with the car. My mom has decided that he will get to drive the red car for a day or two on his hilly ride to work. Then he can judge whether or not the car has issues. I the meantime, I get to drive the old blue truck. The old blue truck is a topic for another time. It is nowhere near as bad as the red car or some of our past vehicles, but it's got a few oddities of its own. I will look exponentially more ridiculous driving it than I do driving the red car. There will be no skimping on wearing the sunglasses as long as I drive the truck. The sight is sure to make people smile at the very least. I love to make people smile.
It is red. Red is, by far, my least favorite color. And the red car is, well, redder than the reddest red times infinity. All of my readers have seen the red exterior. Some of them have looked into the car and observed that every bit of the interior is also red, with a few bits of chrome and black.
The air conditioning does not work. Most of the time I can deal with this. My windows are pretty much perpetually rolled down. However, there are some days when the atmosphere is so vilely hot and humid that having the windows rolled down is not enough. Then there are the rainy days. I am more than happy to leave my windows down while I drive in the rain, but my passengers don't always share that sentiment. In addition, when I drive on the highway with my windows down my hair flies in my face and I can't hear my music.
It literally stinks. It's not bad when it's completely dry, but if too much rain gets inside, I'm doomed to endure a strange musty scent faintly reminiscent of stale pop-tarts. This can last for days or weeks, depending on how much water the seats and carpet absorbed. Closing the windows after it's already been raining for quite some time (my dad does this all the time) makes the smell nearly unbearable when the doors are opened again. I have an air freshener, but it's taking its time in doing what it does. My air is much fresher than it was a few days ago, but I still dread driving it after it has spent the day in the sunny school parking lot with the windows rolled up.
The stereo and radio are completely out of whack. The front passenger speakers don't work. Normally. On occasion they will roar to life when least expected. This isn't really a big issue for most songs, but there are some songs that have certain sounds coming from each side, so you don't get the full expreience unless all the speakers are working. Sometimes the radio flat out dies, only to rise once more anywhere between a few seconds and a few days later. The first time it happened, I had no clue what was going on. I tried turning the volume on the radio all the way up. I tried turning the volume on my ipod all the way up (I listen to my ipod rather than the radio). I tried skipping forward and backward on the playlist. About a minute after it had died, it came back. I had not yet turned down the radio or the ipod, and the song that came on started with a loud yell/scream noise. Jonathon and I jumped (maybe that's an understatement). Every time the song starts we laugh. Ask him about it sometime, and I'm sure you'll get some exciting and elaborate tale.
The seat does not come up very far. It comes up far enough that I have a perfectly safe view of the road, but it's low enough that people can barely see me over the steering wheel and low enough to render the sun blocking apparatus completely useless. Despite the sheer awesomeness of my sunglasses, they aren't dark enough to ward off much of the sun's mighty glare.
The hood will not open. Or at least I can't get it to open anymore. I've watched people open it, and I've opened it myself in the past, but it will no longer open for me. I kind of really need to refill on windshield wiper fluid. I can't completely blame the car for this until I ask someone else to try to open it, but I really do believe, based on how it's behaving, that something is jammed in the simple mechanism that normally allows one to open the hood.
From time to time, the rearview mirror will fall off of the windshield. This is obviously dangerous and unnerving.
The alternator recently gave up on life. Fortunately, it was easily repaired, but I don't know how long that will last. I like being able to start the red car.
It makes strange noises. We call it the cricket car, because the sound it constantly emits sounds somewhat like a herd of crickets (do crickets come in herds?). We've tried replacing all sorts of bands and belts, but nothing keeps the crickets quiet for long. It can get really annoying. When turning left, oftentimes it sounds like a turning podracer. I like this noise, but I have no idea why it happens and that makes me nervous.
The speedometer is off. However, once I figured out that I was really going 3-5 mph slower than it was telling me, I had no issue adjusting.
The gas gauge doesn't work. It normally tells me that my tank is either full or way below empty. I have to watch the odometer instead and reset it every time I fill the tank. This means that I can't fill the tank only partially, for I will have no idea when to refill it if I do so.
Now, the engine is unhappy. When I push the gas pedal, the engine wills to disbelieve that I am pushing it as hard as I am. Sometimes it disbelieves that I am pushing the pedal at all. Then it snaps back into reality and jerks forward. To anyone listening to the engine or monitoring my speed, it would sound and look like I was pumping the gas pedal. It normally only does this for the first several seconds after I stop or apply the brakes. Yesterday, it was so bad that I was surprised to have made it home.
Even though my mom and I know that the poor red car needs to be put out of its misery, my dad is in denial of that fact. He believes that it's not as bad as I say it is, or that it can easily be fixed. To be fair, all of our cars have been nicer to him than to anyone else (someday I might tell tales about my mother and the demented car), so he really isn't getting the full effect. But he also develops attachments to cars and hates to give up on them until they're completely dead. Or until they catch on fire. That happened once, after my mom had insisted that something was amiss with the car. My mom has decided that he will get to drive the red car for a day or two on his hilly ride to work. Then he can judge whether or not the car has issues. I the meantime, I get to drive the old blue truck. The old blue truck is a topic for another time. It is nowhere near as bad as the red car or some of our past vehicles, but it's got a few oddities of its own. I will look exponentially more ridiculous driving it than I do driving the red car. There will be no skimping on wearing the sunglasses as long as I drive the truck. The sight is sure to make people smile at the very least. I love to make people smile.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Adventures in Driving II
It's the second adventure I've typed anyway. Driving mishaps happen pretty much whenever I go somewhere new.
This one actually came to pass on Monday, and I started writing about it on Monday, but then I forgot about it. I was trying to reach the not-so-distant land of Colerain, where Chuck E. Cheese, Half Price Books, and Ihop live so I could visit Home Depot to find some lovely flowers to plant in Ronda, Michael, and Kate Corbin's yard. I knew I had to get on Ronald Reagan, but for some reason it never occurred to me to ask my mom which direction I should be going. I chose east Ronald Reagan. I chose incorrectly. We had passed Blue Ash, narrowly (and an eensy bit illegally) escaped an entrance ramp onto the dreaded valley of horrors know as I-71 (or something-else-71), and come to the end of the Ronald Reagan freeway by the time we were positive that we weren't in the right place. A phone call verified that we had gone the wrong direction. Fortunately, the exit we took landed us in Montgomery, the least shady place you could ask for when trying to turn around in an unfamiliar place.
Eventually, we reached the Colerain Home Depot. We left that place to seek out Ronda's Fairfield home. The directions I wrote from what my mom dictated to me told me to turn on "Reysor". We drove all the way through Fairfield (crossing my old enemy, Dixie Highway, in the process) before realizing that we were once again lost. I turned around. Again. As we headed back, a song began to play on my iPod. This same song played in the last Driving Adventure I chronicled on this blog. It seems to choose the perfect moments to come up in the shuffle. The chorus of this song goes like this: "Maria, Maria, Maria, where did you go?". My brother about killed himself laughing. On the way back through Fairfield, I saw a street that I was pretty sure would take me to the Corbin house by a back route. For some odd reason, Jonathon was against that. I can't imagine why (I checked with Ronda later, and the street actually would have gotten me there just as I had thought it would). As we drove, it occurred to my brother and sister that they could help look for the street if they knew what it was called. I told them its name, and they spotted it shortly thereafter. Apparently, it was spelled "Resor" rather than "Reysor", but sometimes I only see the exact thing that I'm looking for.
This one actually came to pass on Monday, and I started writing about it on Monday, but then I forgot about it. I was trying to reach the not-so-distant land of Colerain, where Chuck E. Cheese, Half Price Books, and Ihop live so I could visit Home Depot to find some lovely flowers to plant in Ronda, Michael, and Kate Corbin's yard. I knew I had to get on Ronald Reagan, but for some reason it never occurred to me to ask my mom which direction I should be going. I chose east Ronald Reagan. I chose incorrectly. We had passed Blue Ash, narrowly (and an eensy bit illegally) escaped an entrance ramp onto the dreaded valley of horrors know as I-71 (or something-else-71), and come to the end of the Ronald Reagan freeway by the time we were positive that we weren't in the right place. A phone call verified that we had gone the wrong direction. Fortunately, the exit we took landed us in Montgomery, the least shady place you could ask for when trying to turn around in an unfamiliar place.
Eventually, we reached the Colerain Home Depot. We left that place to seek out Ronda's Fairfield home. The directions I wrote from what my mom dictated to me told me to turn on "Reysor". We drove all the way through Fairfield (crossing my old enemy, Dixie Highway, in the process) before realizing that we were once again lost. I turned around. Again. As we headed back, a song began to play on my iPod. This same song played in the last Driving Adventure I chronicled on this blog. It seems to choose the perfect moments to come up in the shuffle. The chorus of this song goes like this: "Maria, Maria, Maria, where did you go?". My brother about killed himself laughing. On the way back through Fairfield, I saw a street that I was pretty sure would take me to the Corbin house by a back route. For some odd reason, Jonathon was against that. I can't imagine why (I checked with Ronda later, and the street actually would have gotten me there just as I had thought it would). As we drove, it occurred to my brother and sister that they could help look for the street if they knew what it was called. I told them its name, and they spotted it shortly thereafter. Apparently, it was spelled "Resor" rather than "Reysor", but sometimes I only see the exact thing that I'm looking for.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Adventures in Driving
Being a newly licensed driver brings its share of adventures. Actually, being a driver at all brings its share of thrills. Today I had all sorts of fun on the way to and from Laser Web.
To get there, we were supposed to take Winton to Kemper to Dixie Highway (yes, the territory of the Archdukes of Dixie Highway) to Laser Web. We got from Winton to Kemper just fine, but after being on Kemper for nearly a half-hour, we began to fear that something had gone wrong. It was only supposed to take a half-hour total to reach our destination. Jonathon called back home, and my mom confirmed that we had indeed gone way too far.
Before I continue, I must make note of a detail that resurfaces later on. We came to an intersection with a road called Springfield Pike and waited at the stoplight behind a certain oldish navy blue car with a troop support magnet on the back, and we stayed behind the car for some uncertain amount of time.
My mom told us to turn around and go back, this time watching for an intersection with a UDF on one corner and a White Castle on another. When we turned around, we were facing west and the setting sun sent beams of light through the clouds - doubtless a sign that we would make it.
We drove for about fifteen minutes before reaching an intersection with the correct landmarks - the intersection between Kemper and Springfield Pike, not Dixie Highway. Once again, we were stopped at this stoplight, and when I looked at the car in front of us, we realized it was the same one we had been behind before. We argued about whether or not it might be the right street with the wrong name, but I insisted that we keep driving (wtill behind the navy blue car with the magnet) because the name was wrong. After driving a couple blocks, I had Jonathon call mom again, and she told us to pull over while she rechecked the directions. I took the first turn, and by shocking coincidence, so did the navy car in front of us. After that we didn't see our friend car again, as Rachel named it.
My mom casually commented that Dixie Highway had sixteen names (of which I only knew two up until tonight) and she could have given us the wrong one. We waited for several minutes in some random person's driveway while my mom did some researching and learned that another name for Dixie Highway was none other than Springfield Pike. We weary travelers turned our coach around once more and got to Laser Web forty minutes late, but without further mishap. A few other potentially ugly but in reality harmless events took place during our journey, but I will not enumerate them at this time.
On the way back home, I realized to my dismay that I was wearing my glasses rather than my contacts. When I wear my glasses at night, my vision is blurred and I can't read road signs. I knew I had to turn right off of Dixie Highway/Springfield Pike/Route 4, so I stayed in the right-most lane. I realized a few seconds too late that I had been separated from the rest of the road by a concrete barrier and was now on the entrance ramp to 275. Not having any other choice, I stayed on 275. Crisis was averted when I saw that the next exit was to Springdale and Glendale. I figured I would know where I was in either of those places. I was right, and we actually ended up getting home faster that way. Driving through the park with blurred vision was somewhat frightening, but I made it through just fine.
Quelle soirée!
To get there, we were supposed to take Winton to Kemper to Dixie Highway (yes, the territory of the Archdukes of Dixie Highway) to Laser Web. We got from Winton to Kemper just fine, but after being on Kemper for nearly a half-hour, we began to fear that something had gone wrong. It was only supposed to take a half-hour total to reach our destination. Jonathon called back home, and my mom confirmed that we had indeed gone way too far.
Before I continue, I must make note of a detail that resurfaces later on. We came to an intersection with a road called Springfield Pike and waited at the stoplight behind a certain oldish navy blue car with a troop support magnet on the back, and we stayed behind the car for some uncertain amount of time.
My mom told us to turn around and go back, this time watching for an intersection with a UDF on one corner and a White Castle on another. When we turned around, we were facing west and the setting sun sent beams of light through the clouds - doubtless a sign that we would make it.
We drove for about fifteen minutes before reaching an intersection with the correct landmarks - the intersection between Kemper and Springfield Pike, not Dixie Highway. Once again, we were stopped at this stoplight, and when I looked at the car in front of us, we realized it was the same one we had been behind before. We argued about whether or not it might be the right street with the wrong name, but I insisted that we keep driving (wtill behind the navy blue car with the magnet) because the name was wrong. After driving a couple blocks, I had Jonathon call mom again, and she told us to pull over while she rechecked the directions. I took the first turn, and by shocking coincidence, so did the navy car in front of us. After that we didn't see our friend car again, as Rachel named it.
My mom casually commented that Dixie Highway had sixteen names (of which I only knew two up until tonight) and she could have given us the wrong one. We waited for several minutes in some random person's driveway while my mom did some researching and learned that another name for Dixie Highway was none other than Springfield Pike. We weary travelers turned our coach around once more and got to Laser Web forty minutes late, but without further mishap. A few other potentially ugly but in reality harmless events took place during our journey, but I will not enumerate them at this time.
On the way back home, I realized to my dismay that I was wearing my glasses rather than my contacts. When I wear my glasses at night, my vision is blurred and I can't read road signs. I knew I had to turn right off of Dixie Highway/Springfield Pike/Route 4, so I stayed in the right-most lane. I realized a few seconds too late that I had been separated from the rest of the road by a concrete barrier and was now on the entrance ramp to 275. Not having any other choice, I stayed on 275. Crisis was averted when I saw that the next exit was to Springdale and Glendale. I figured I would know where I was in either of those places. I was right, and we actually ended up getting home faster that way. Driving through the park with blurred vision was somewhat frightening, but I made it through just fine.
Quelle soirée!
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
This may possibly end up being one of the corniest-titled posts I've produced yet, as you will soon discover. It is trebly meaningful.
First, I've made a resolution that I'm going to try not to stress out about all the crap that my teachers are going to throw at me within the next few weeks. So far, it's working. Let's see if I can keep to my decision and keep from being bogged down by despair.
Second, it is the title of a fun song from Spam-a-Lot brought to the world by Monty Python. I sometimes sing it during biology with a friend of mine who also loves it. She knows the words, and I'm content to sing the few words I know and sing "la la la" with great energy for the parts I don't know, so we make a great duo.
Third, (and this is the part that makes my title kind of lame), I discovered something fascinating sitting on someone's curb for garbage collection after school today. My mom pointed it out as we drove past and I told her to turn around and let me get out and snag it. So we turned around and I had to stuff this thing in the trunk along with six backpacks and a clarinet because the car was already crammed with seven people in a vehicle made with six seatbelts that provides uncomfortable seating even when only five people are in it. This item is now sitting in my room, and I'm not sure what to do with it. When I started typing this, I had intended to describe it and add a picture. But presently the only possible use I can come up with for this unique piece of craftsmanship is the white elephant gift exchange, and I don't want to ruin the surprise for anyone. But I can assure you it relates to the title of my post. You can try to guess if you'd like, but asking any of my siblings, the Corbins, the Browns, or the McCrates is cheating (even though most of you wouldn't know who they all were to ask them, I thought I'd make it clear that you can't ask them for those of you who do know them).
First, I've made a resolution that I'm going to try not to stress out about all the crap that my teachers are going to throw at me within the next few weeks. So far, it's working. Let's see if I can keep to my decision and keep from being bogged down by despair.
Second, it is the title of a fun song from Spam-a-Lot brought to the world by Monty Python. I sometimes sing it during biology with a friend of mine who also loves it. She knows the words, and I'm content to sing the few words I know and sing "la la la" with great energy for the parts I don't know, so we make a great duo.
Third, (and this is the part that makes my title kind of lame), I discovered something fascinating sitting on someone's curb for garbage collection after school today. My mom pointed it out as we drove past and I told her to turn around and let me get out and snag it. So we turned around and I had to stuff this thing in the trunk along with six backpacks and a clarinet because the car was already crammed with seven people in a vehicle made with six seatbelts that provides uncomfortable seating even when only five people are in it. This item is now sitting in my room, and I'm not sure what to do with it. When I started typing this, I had intended to describe it and add a picture. But presently the only possible use I can come up with for this unique piece of craftsmanship is the white elephant gift exchange, and I don't want to ruin the surprise for anyone. But I can assure you it relates to the title of my post. You can try to guess if you'd like, but asking any of my siblings, the Corbins, the Browns, or the McCrates is cheating (even though most of you wouldn't know who they all were to ask them, I thought I'd make it clear that you can't ask them for those of you who do know them).
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