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Ashland no place to get lost in
By adamg on Sun, 05/24/2009 - 7:03am
Mels reports spending 45 minutes in Clocktown at night trying to get back to Rte. 9:
... It is one thing to get lost in the city, where things are well lit, and there are gas stations or Store 24s where you can pull over and get your bearings or ask for directions. The middle of Metro West is a whole other story, driving around on dark winding roads where you need to have your high beams on until a car coming the other direction, with its high beams on, forces you to cut the lights and drive blind for a moment or two. We had to retrace our steps not once, but twice, when we finally found a man getting into his car in Ashland Center who told us how to get to Route 9, and, from there, the Pike. (Bless him.) ...
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Comments
FEAR THE TREES!!!
FEAR THE TREES!!! FEEEEEEEEAAAAARRRRRR!!!
Seriously, for fuck's sake, yes, it is not a highly populated urban area but Ashland is not exactly an isolated burg, either. Next time, bring a map kids.
seconded
Struck me as evidence of the provincialism of "a city girl at heart."
Get out much?
What happens when she gets outside I-495? And has she ever traveled outside the US?
The crowd gets tough
I covered Ashland for a year or so as a reporter, so I'm a little bit familiar with the town. If you're not on one of the two main roads (135 or 126) or in the center of town, it's pretty easy to get lost at night.
Getting lost is fine
Hey, we all get lost from time to time - that's fine. With the right attitude, it can even make for a good story. She came off as a bit of whiner, IMHO.
OUCH!
Thanks, Adam, definitely a tough crowd. (Can't please them all.)
We did have 1. directions and 2. a map, but no GPS. (And we weren't on either 135 or 126.) In retrospect, I would say that our biggest problem was that we couldn't/didn't see any street signs to confirm that we were going in the right direction in the first place. I think that was my first time in Ashland in 10 years and certainly my first time at night.
But, yeah, city girl at heart, right here. (Don't like the dark; don't like the quiet.)
You can't get there from here
Even before the GPS there was this amazing, compact, and comprehensive method of navigation called a map. I was always amused by my husband's friends and how they didn't seem to know how to read or use one very well when we started going on further and further flung camping trips, or know north from south or navigate by the sun. I was further intrigued at such lack of skills since the far flung nowheres of my youth had grid systems in town and lots of good signage on the roadways for the most part, and New England is pretty random about these things. In a similar vein, my MIL never learned to change a tire because my FIL said she could always call somebody.
Where I grew up, particularly the isolated places that I lived when I was quite young, there was a term for this: dangerous. Just call somebody? What if the nearest phone is 20 miles away and there is no cel signal? What if there are no services for 80 miles? It isn't that somebody wouldn't come help you out - it's just way easier and much quicker to be able to just change the tire and get along. Ask for directions? That only helps if there is some place to stop and ask directions.
I found it amusing when one of my city slicker kids was freaking out in central Oregon when we went to the Fossil Beds and there was a sign saying where the nearest this or that was: pay phone was 20 miles, gasoline was 45 miles, and your cel phone wouldn't work until you got to Heppner, 60 miles distant. Much easier to read a map and check with the sun.