This morning I discovered another reason why I fly.
I try to take a morning walk as often as possible, five to six days a week usually. I try to walk even when I am visiting the kids. I am a bit nervous the first day whether I will remember the route and get home safely. In Vegas Brian's mom gave me a little map of the streets that I could take to get in my two miles and make it back home fairly easily. No problem. Their neighborhood was pretty "square". Maybe not quite like Utah's simply amazing grid system but not bad.
Here is one of my walking routes at home.Pretty simple, and as you can see, the directions are pretty straightforward also.
This walk takes about 35 minutes. Now Irvine is a different story!! I had been to Albertsons grocery store near Andrew's place on a previous visit and thought this would be a good direction to take my walk this morning. Here is a map of the area. (The path marked in blue was where I traveled.)
By the time I got to Albertsons I had expended less than 10 minutes of my planned 40 minutes so I decided to keep going a bit longer before heading back. Even though the streets around there are all named after colleges and universities instead of north, east, south or west something, I figured if I just did my own type of grid calculations, I could get back okay. I did a 90 degree turn and kept going. Four 90 degrees with approximate equal distances in between would bring you back to the beginning, right? Well, I don't think there is one straight street in Irvine, nor are there any 90 degree corners. In spite of that, I did make it back to Campus Drive , which is the street that Albertson's is on. I then turned right on Campus drive and thought I would soon be back at Andrew's apartment. I walked a few blocks and didn't see any familiar landmarks. I saw a lot more businesses that I hadn't noticed before. I thought I had done a pretty good job of noticing which streets I took along the way--except for the VERY FIRST STREET. After wandering a route that looked something like this...
I decided I was lost. That was hard to admit. My thoughts then turned to wondering what Andrew and Melissa were doing and thinking about my being gone so long. My half hour walk had now been stretched to over two hours.
Did I mention that I didn't take my phone with me? Since I was walking so early, I thought no one would be calling me this time of morning. That was my first mistake. After spending some time looking for a business establishment that would be open at 8:30 on Saturday morning, I finally found someone who would let me use their phone book AND phone. I called Andrew and Melissa. As I surmised, I was not really that far from home. Melissa told me that I had to go up Campus Drive to California Avenue and turn right. That was the street that intersected Campus Drive back by Albertsons. One 90 degree turn in the RIGHT direction and I was headed home. 2 1/2 hours and 6+ miles after I began my walk, Andrew found me wandering along Verano Place trying to find the laundromat that was right outside their apartment. I decided then and there that I would have been in REALLY BIG TROUBLE if I had driven to Irvine from Utah. I doubt that I would be here yet!
3 comments:
One time when we visited Andrew and Melissa Brian and I took a bike ride. We ended up doing the same thing, I think we went 6+ miles. I about died. Luckily for me, Brian is a better navigator than I am. Do you remember when we were driving home from Andrew's one Thanksgiving and we had told dad the directions and he kept missing them. Brian and I still laugh at that. He would say "I can't remember that many directions at once. Just tell me one at a time."
what an adventure! did you get any picutures of tristen that you can share?
I just read this blog post again and it made me laugh and smile. You are cute Mom. It's funny because I just read your snail post and commented on how is reminded me of your morning walks when you came to visit us. Fun memories, I rather miss California after seeing that map you had of my old neighborhood, quite the route you took however.
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