I got lost again today. Twice. Not just looking for a specific street. No, I got lost looking for a whole *town* which I managed not to find. Twice. Two different consultations of the map, two different routes. Two different encounters with road-construction or traffic congestion diversion tactics. Folks, I can't find Bonner Springs with both hands and a roadmap.
After getting horribly, obscenely lost on trip 1, I came home and wrote directions on the back of my hand in ink. Then, on Trip 2, I got diverted from I70 (the road I desparately needed to get on) due to some big car race that was going on at a racetrack off I70. When I got shunted through some little podunk Kansas town, I got off onto the wrong highway, and didn't realize I had been going in totally the wrong direction until I saw the skyscrapers of downtown on the horizon, by which point I realized I was so horribly off track and out of the way that I might as well continue in the direction I was headed and go home.
I was defeated, humiliated, demoralized, and stressed out. I literally wept hot, bitter tears, and felt useless and pathetic. I can't get ANYWHERE on my own in this thrice-damned city (and surrounding area) without wasting half the day being lost, and sometimes I can't even get there, anyway. In the privacy of my car, I raged, screamed, cursed myself, and hollered my throat hoarse after the 2nd fruitless trip. I spent all morning and an entire tank of gas for no good result. What would have amounted to a $5.00 sewing job I completely missed out on, because I simply couldn't find Bonner Springs. If I had found it, it would have been a purely Pyhrric victory anyway, as the cost of driving out there and back would probably have been $5.00 of gasoline.
Today's bungle, teamed with yesterday's failure to find the most significant business street in North Kansas City has left me feeling very incompetent and idiotic. Most people don't find it such an ordeal to get from point A to point B. I, on the other hand, miss exits, misread road signs, forget if I needed to turn righ or left, and fail to take note of any really distinctive landmarks that may or may not exist. (for all I know and car, all the 'burbs are made up of are Goodyear Tire stores and Perkins pancake houses, Sam's Clubs, and Hen-House groceries…there are no steeeenkin' landmarks in Suburbia)
If I am not in a part of town where I know the street names, I am screwed.
Oh, well, it doesn't seem to matter how bloody lost I get out in the 'burbs…I always get home easily. I can be stranded out in BFE, but as soon as I decide, “screw this shit, I have other stuff I need to do today, I am going home.” I am back in my house in like 20 minutes.