Ravings of the Occasionally Opinionated

"You Can't Get There From Heah"
(What We Need Are Glaciers That Ran Sideways)

Alice put me in charge of organizing a trip with Garrett to visit colleges at the beginning of his spring vacation before resumption of lacrosse practices. "Organize" and "me" don't go together very well, but I pulled it off. I figured out a nice order to visit the colleges Garrett was interested in. I made hotel reservations. I remembered to bring the notebook with the colleges we were visiting and directions to them. The only thing I forgot was a map, but that's OK because my Audi has a navigation system so the directions wouldn't really be necessary anyway.

We drove to Utica in the evening and stayed in a hotel, whence we would leave in the morning for Colgate, which is in Hamilton, NY. I programmed in "Hamilton" into the nav system, and it promptly told me it was 350 kilometers in a preposterous direction, and that I was off the map. When I bought my used Audi, a navigation system was a requirement, but I didn't know that there was NAV-C (the "old system") and NAV-D (the "new system"). Guess which one I have? Even if I had the new system, it still might have had the same problem, which is that it runs off CDs, and my car came with the mid-Atlantic CD (being a Pennsylvania car) and I have a north-Atlantic CD, and central and western New York turn out to be on the Ohio Valley CD. Good thing I had the notebook with directions, and good thing I allowed plenty of time. We got lost, and got to Colgate with a minute to spare before the information session. From Colgate, it was on to Hamilton College (which is not in Hamilton, but in Clinton) where Garrett's cousin Danielle is an official tour guide and gave us a private tour, complete with lots of information usually left off the real tours.

From there we went to Syracuse to visit Garrett's cousin Rachel, and her son Jared, my new great nephew. I now have two great nephews. Rachel's sister Dori was there, so Garrett saw three first cousins in one day.

We had a whirlwind tour the next day, Sunday, when all the admissions offices are closed, so I cleverly visited Union, where we got a private tour from our next door neighbor who attends, and then Williams, where we got a tour from yet a fourth first cousin, Adam, who attends there. It seems it was Easter, and finding a place to eat wasn't so easy. From Williams, we went up into Vermont to see Middlebury. I figured with a 12% acceptance rate and an admitted student grade average of A, Garrett doesn't have much chance of getting into Middlebury, so visiting it on Sunday when we couldn't get an official tour was as good a day as any. Why waste a Saturday or Monday tour?

Middlebury is at about the same longitude as our house at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, so we headed there to spend the night. Google had suggested a particularly roundabout route which avoided any semblance of east/west direction, so when my nav system (we were back on the map in New England) suggested a different way, I took it. It directed me to turn onto a road with a sign:

I had no idea whether we intended to go through Warren (I have Nav-C, remember, which being primitive, tells you what to do but won't let you know where that might be taking you) but I had a sneaking suspicion that we probably were. That is, my nav system was directing me over a mountain road that is closed in the winter. After a short time on the side of the road, I figured that logging truck had to have come from really high up the mountain, and that pickup going up was probably going somewhere, and this being one of the least snowy winters in memory, there was no sign of snow on any mountain, any where. I proceeded as directed, hoping that if the road were closed, that it at least wouldn't be blocked off. Besides, the nav system indicated I'd be turning soon. (It turns out that you have to make a few turns to get to Warren.)

Eventually the pavement ended, at another sign suggesting I shouldn't try to get to Warren. Eventually, pavement reappeared, which seemed a good sign at first, but really was because the road became so steep that an unpaved one would probably promptly perish in the runoff. (How about that alliteration? Try whispering "Purple people please pious popes" in someone's ear some time. But I digress.) The usual switchbacks were present, but in fewer quantity than most roads, as this went straight up. Occasionally the nav system would decide we were not on a road, and just point in the general direction of Loon, and then figure out where we were and say, "Continue to follow the road." We reached the summit ("Yea!!!") only to discover the road was covered with snow! -- for only a few feet. There were patches of snow on that side of the mountain on the top 100 feet or so, and there was a car parked up there, probably a hiker (or someone who hadn't made it to Warren the month before.) Downhill seemed steeper, and first gear couldn't hold a safe speed, so I was on the brakes plenty. Garrett commented a couple of times that he was glad I was driving. We eventually came to a sign facing the other way, mostly blocking the road. I had to stop to let an oncoming vehicle pass the sign before I could go around the sign. Garrett says it said the road was closed.

Having crossed a mountain range, we were set for a great journey. We wound up on Route 100, and were directed to turn right on Main Street. As soon as I complied, it said, "When possible, make a U-turn." I went back to Route 100, and where it thought Main Street was, there wasn't. As soon as I passed where it thought it should be, it advised me once again to continue to follow the road, this time Route 100. Readers not from Vermont may not realize that Route 100 is a well-known road that travels north/south through the middle of the mountains, passing lots of ski areas. When I came to Smuggler's Notch, I knew I had been led astray. I've never been that far north on Route 100. Ooh, a map would have been nice. Eventually I wound up on I-89 north of Montpelier, heading back south. I was fuming. Stupid nav system. Montpelier! (In Quebec, they call it "Montpelier", which if you speak French, is obviously pronounced "Moan-pel-yay".) Those Google directions were beginning to look pretty good.

Having arrived at Loon (after dinner at the excellent Chinese restaurant in Lincoln, NH, which is always open on the major Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter), I checked Google to see where we'd gone, and where we should have gone. In retrospect, the nav system did a pretty good job, taking us no more off course than the Google southern route. Had it or I correctly identified Main Street (which on Google, was little lines making the bigger closed road seem a major highway) we would have saved quite a bit of distance and avoided (in French, please) Montpelier.

There just isn't an east/west route through the mountains. Either the natural geology, or the damn glaciers, carved everything north/south. Every road runs north/south, with an occasional exception at a slight diagonal. Additional exceptions that are more direct are closed in the winter.

The next morning with Garrett driving, I turned on the nav system to get us to UNH, in Durham. Garrett said, "I thought you were never going to use the nav system again."

"That was before I checked Google last night and decided it really wasn't so bad. You just can't get here from there."

After programming in "Durham", the nav system suggested that when possible, Garrett should make a U-turn and head the wrong way, presumably into Maine. I then programmed in "Durham, Town of" and verified it was telling us to go the correct way, checking my notebook directions.