Daily prompt: Wrong turns

Tags

directions, found, lost, postaday2014

When was the last time you got lost? Was it an enjoyable experience, or a stressful one? Tell us all about it.

I have gotten lost quite a few times in my life, both alone and with other people, surprisingly I felt more comfortable being lost alone than with others. The other person’s stress oozed over onto me and made me anxious not because we were lost, but because the other was distressed about it despite my reassurances. The fact of being lost never scared me or annoyed me; being lost only means that you aren’t sure where you are, if you calmly look at a map, ask someone or take a deep cleansing breath your destination will come to you. A calm mind is an open mind, you will find your way.

The most lost that I ever felt on my own was in London, I don’t even know where I was and I couldn’t find it on my map, but I remedied the situation immediately when I politely asked for directions.

My husband and I got horrendously lost when we rented a motor boat at Bar Harbor, Maine twenty four years ago. We had been given a teeny-tiny map of the surrounding harbor area and before we knew it, we were lost in the thickest fog ever, it was so think that before we knew it, we had met up with a whale watching boat pretty far out. I am fairly sure that this was the only time that I was even faintly nervous because after a few hours of being lost in the fog, we were so cold and we were worried about running out of gas. At some point we came across another boat and I made my future husband stop and ask for directions. Thankfully those directions were good and we eventually made it back to the harbor; we had been gone for so long that they were about ready to send the Coast Guard to find us. I still remember how cold I was, it was excruciating, my bones were so frozen, it was painful.

All the other times that I ended up lost with others, I always found our way,despite the complaining and the fretting I managed to get us to where we needed to go. Like I said a calm mind is a steady mind, an open mind, and that will get you where you need to go.

Navigating Boston?

Tags

Driving, GPS, lost, navigation, postaday2013

I have a confession to make, I have been coming to Boston for how long now? I still don’t know how to put the separate parts of Boston together in one cohesive block in my head, so I still get lost very easily when it comes to getting from point A to point B.

I don’t know if it’s because Boston isn’t set on a perpendicular grid like New York City or if my powers of orientation are getting extremely deficient, but I get confused and turned around amazingly quickly. Oh, I forgot to add that on top of everything else it was pouring rain today so not only was I trying to listen to the nice lady feeding me directions through the GPS, but I had to deal with the torrential downpour that renders everyone into a horrible driver. Wait I forgot something else, highway 93 was getting flooded while I was on the road trying to navigate my way through Boston. All in all what should have been an hour ride became a three and a quarter of an hour drive and I still never got to the destination programmed into the GPS. My hubby met me after all that time, twenty miles shy of where I should have ended up, he felt bad about all that traffic so we met at a Starbucks and I got a cafe latte for my troubles.

I love the city of Boston but I still need to do my homework in getting to know her ins and outs on the road.