Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A chance to complain

Weather: Dark, mostly clear, 30s
Music: Frank Zappa - The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life

Sometimes, you try to look like a nice guy and you get stuck driving around uncharted Boston at night. Still, with any luck, you're at least not a complete jerk and you set off lightheartedly. It helps that there's no inner turmoil about whether or not a nice guy gets to pick the music.

Alicia tested my "I'm just going to drive and let you tell me where to go!" pronouncements right off the bat, sending us back through Davis Square to get to Elm St. right away instead of snaking through one-ways to avoid the square. I commented, but probably shouldn't have since it looks like that is the Google Maps-recommended route. A good demonstration of the principle of "get to the fast road as quickly as possible."

Anyway, we <3 Beacon Street and Alicia had been this way before, so we took off on this odd-looking route that, in retrospect, can't be that much slower than going through Harvard Square and the heart of Cambridge. It didn't take long for me to become completely disoriented. There's something about driving in cities that completely scrambles my sense of direction. Since I talk enough smack about how good that sense usually is, I'm insecure about this and want to tell you three possible reasons why.

1) I psych myself out about driving in cities, which leads to focusing on the moment and the next move above all else instead of devoting some mental energy to keeping track of which way we're going.

2) The bright lights and activity of a city are just too much for a Mainer like me.

3) I always think city grids are laid out NS/EW, but they almost never are, so me and the map are usually way out of sync.

Anyway, we ended up a couple of blocks south of Western Ave, but recovered nicely to take the second bridge and swing onto Soldiers Field Road. Brian Urlacher was nowhere to be found...


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Soon, there were a lot of signs overhead. The designers had fit in a regular grade-level intersection right next to a full interstate interchange, necessitating two turns to the right in quick succession. Alicia saw the a sign saying to turn right for Cambridge Street--unfortunately, the first right was for the Mass Pike. This seems to happen to me an awful lot--most notably at that Pine Hill Road /Route 9 left-turn bonanza in Berwick, ME that I told everybody and their townie dads about. I don't have the energy for another bulleted list of explanations--next time.

It seemed more likely that there would be a quick exit going eastbound than westbound, so east we went through a toll and on to the Copley Place exit. Well, Back Bay is sort of familiar. Alicia got off the phone with Regina, our destination. "She's clueless, huh?" No, not really, but the sense of entitlement was persisting.

Things were mostly uneventful from there--I "remembered" (guessed) to head North to Comm Ave and we took Reg's good advice to take Beacon St. to Washington. The only incident was white-knuckling for a minute at a red light while preparing to go straight from a left-turn only lane, but in the end I didn't even have to go over 3,000 RPM. You can go pretty fast in a city when the street is empty and the lights are going your way.

Dropped Alicia off at the corner of Washington and Commonwealth. Saw the sights of Newton and made it back to the Pike, 128, and on home. Pretty good ride, all told. Let's see if it sticks.

What's better, static image maps or dynamic insertions?