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No sense of direction

rapmarks

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Just lightening up from Coronavirus

none of my sisters have any sense of direction, all three of them. I can remember my father getting lost too. None of them will look at a map, and don’t understand maps.

my sister has a place in my subdivision but can’t find her way around. Now this subdivision has a road that goes around the entire subdivision and is two miles long. She has been here for months and I have shown her around. Just this week she made the wrong turn in the subdivision, and two more times driving to a store that is less than a mile away a right turn from our entrance.
but the latest took the cake. Jan lives next door to her to the north, and has been here all winter. Next door to the south has not been down at all but the son arrived for a few days. My sisters bedroom is on the south side. She announced that jan snores and she can hear her right through the walls and had to sleep on the couch ( why she wouldn’t just go in the other bedroom is another issue). I pointed out to her that that isn’t jan, it is the neighbor son who is snoring. She didn’t believe me. She has so little sense of direction that she is turned around inside her own house,which is a simple shotgun style.
 

presley

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Oddly, I cannot use maps, but I can "intuit" my way around. It's pretty common for me to have a feeling that we should go a certain way and it works out. Also, if I've been somewhere once before, even if it's been years and the area has changed drastically, I suddenly remember how to get around and what used to be there.
 

Talent312

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GPS is the saving grace for the directionally challenged and clueless.
So, buy her a Garmin. It can even show walking directions between houses.

But even with a GPS, I drove past the turn to my house. I forgot where I was.
.
 

Sandy VDH

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I am great at directions, and even know them from inside of buildings too. I am also a map lover. But I am often amazed at the amount of people who are "directionally challanged". Thanks goodness for GPS and directions are none of the people would get anywhere.
 

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My 30 something son and his fiancée don't know what a fold out map is, and I don't think have much of a sense of direction. It's interactive GPS and Google maps on their Iphone's where ever they go!
 

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My parents both seem to have built-in sonar, but the kids didn't inherit it. It can be very difficult for me, so I tend to take same path each time. Make darned sure once I walk into a big place to turn around and see what my exit looks like.

One of my mother's friends was really bad - she would get lost if she took a left turn. She was mostly a SAHM with her husband doing all the driving. Only right turns are fine, if you live in a circular area and never need a left. In theory, we have that with roundabouts. I wonder how Mrs Scatteregia would have done with those??

I like my Garmin and it also has pedestrian and bike routes. Now I have a car with it built-in so less concern on getting lost plus voice activated.
 

DaveNV

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I have a great sense of direction, and I also really enjoy old-school paper maps. I learned as a kid all about them, and how to properly read them, when my Science teacher taught us what all the weird numbers and colors meant. (He also taught us how to read weather maps, which was very cool at the time.) In the 1970s, AAA's TripTik maps were a lifesaver, as I was driving all over the country.

I still like doing things with paper maps or the computer equivalent, except that GPS on my phone, and my car's built-in navigation kind of take the hassle out of it. I do like to track my route's progress via Google Maps on my computer, if only so I can make sure the GPS isn't sending me in the wrong direction. I've had occasions when visiting strange places where GPS has routed me through the backroads of nowhere, often the longest way around, and it seemed like hours before I found my way back to civilization. Sometimes old-school is easier.

Charles Kuralt, the iconic CBS Newsman, had a TV series called "On The Road." It was great fun to watch, as he described the interesting things found on the backroads of America. He disliked Interstate Highways, because he said they were only routes to get somewhere, often ignoring the great things that make traveling interesting. His joke was, “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.” :)

Dave
 

rhonda

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@geekette, love the term "built-in sonar." I'll borrow it and assert that I inherited such from my Mom. The battle for direction is real. Dad? Needed maps for everything; daily navigation was a challenge. Mom? knew exactly which direction we needed but couldn't read a map worth a darn. Road trips with these two in front seat was a drama. As oldest, it was my job to squeeze into the middle gap; read a map; watch the road signs ("young eyes"); etc. I quickly became the navigator.

Being the navigator at a young age probably explains why I loved my earliest Garmin unit. Took that thing on cruises just to track "waypoints." Totally geeked out on having GPS. {{ mind blown!! }}

@rapmarks , Thanks for the fun topic. Hope you are stronger daily.
 

"Roger"

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It is hard for me to imagine someone with no sense of direction, but I know it exists. Years ago I was at an all day meeting. One of the participants was a very intelligent woman, a well respected university French professor, who said that she had no sense of direction. At noon, we needed to leave the room, turn left in the hallway and then turn right down a long hallway that led to a cafeteria. While this might not sound complicated, we had to lead her back to the room because she had no idea of to find her way back.

This was the first I became aware of this, but learned that there is an abnormality that leaves people with no sense of direction. The people are not at all unintelligent, just facing an unusual abnormality.
 

rapmarks

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I have a DS who, at age 3 while sitting in his car seat in the back, would tell me when I took a wrong turn. He gets his sense of direction from his father....
My grandson did that too
 

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I started trucking many decades ago- long before electronic maps. I would buy a (paper) map of nearly every city where I had a pickup or delivery. Eventually I had shoe boxes full of those old paper maps. They're all gone now, but I still love paper maps. One treasured acquisition was a U.S. highway map before any Interstates, and many of the old roads had names, not numbers. Like the 'Lincoln Highway (US-30) or the 'National Road', (US-40), or the 'Post Road' (US-1). I have an excellent sense of direction and will occasionally 'dead recon' to find an address in an unfamiliar town. Now, like almost everyone I have GPS- both standalone and in my phone. DW (who is somewhat directionally challenged) has it built into her car.

Thanks for the thread. It triggered many happy memories.

JIm
 

klpca

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Oddly, I cannot use maps, but I can "intuit" my way around. It's pretty common for me to have a feeling that we should go a certain way and it works out. Also, if I've been somewhere once before, even if it's been years and the area has changed drastically, I suddenly remember how to get around and what used to be there.
In our house we call it built in gps. I have it and my youngest daughter has it. We just don't get lost - ever - at home. I confess to some issues in unfamiliar cities but I am usually good to go with 3 days. We were in London when my youngest was 12 and she had somehow mastered the entire tube map in one day. We just told her where we were going, she'd look at the tube map and give us the directions in about a minute. It was very useful.

I can also read maps and I don't understand the disconnect on that but it seems pretty common.

When m y husband and I were first dating he didn't trust my built in gps so one night coming home from a date he got lost. Now I knew exactly where we were, and exactly how to get to the freeway to go home so I offered him directions. He said, "I'm not lost". I let him circle around for another 20 minutes then I said "now do you want me to tell you how to get to the freeway"? And off we went. He's never really embraced the concept of built in gps, but he goes along with it for the most part. I always tell him, have I ever gotten us lost and he knows that the answer is no. Of course now our phones have gps so he just uses that (although the routes it sends us on sometimes! I am glad that the phone told him to go that way because he would be mad if I had sent him on that route!)
 

pedro47

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Suggestion only, purchase an Apple Watch, as a gift; and turn on the GPS app so they cannot get lost in the home, so they can find their direction.

Suggestion you can paint or buy large colorful signs for her home with pictures detailing the bedroom areas, the kitchen, the living room, and the bathroom areas. LOL.
 
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Luanne

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I have no sense of direction. I do not know North and South, I only know left and right. Dh knows not to listen to me when I try to give him directions. However there are times I am right, and I KNOW I am right and he still won't listen to me. :D GPS and Google maps have been my life savers.
 

DaveNV

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I started trucking many decades ago- long before electronic maps. I would buy a (paper) map of nearly every city where I had a pickup or delivery. Eventually I had shoe boxes full of those old paper maps. They're all gone now, but I still love paper maps. One treasured acquisition was a U.S. highway map before any Interstates, and many of the old roads had names, not numbers. Like the 'Lincoln Highway (US-30) or the 'National Road', (US-40), or the 'Post Road' (US-1). I have an excellent sense of direction and will occasionally 'dead recon' to find an address in an unfamiliar town. Now, like almost everyone I have GPS- both standalone and in my phone. DW (who is somewhat directionally challenged) has it built into her car.

Thanks for the thread. It triggered many happy memories.

JIm

I remember when the Interstate Highways were being built, but I didn't start driving until later. In my area, the local highway in places became part of the I-5 construction north of Seattle. So even today, what's left of the old highway is in pieces, where it sort of parallels the freeway, then disappears, only to start up again further up the road.

Wasn't the thing about named highways was the names sometimes changed when you got to different cities? So you needed to know the name of your road in different areas. Numbers make it a lot simpler. I'm sure Route 66 fans appreciated that.

Dave
 

pedro47

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I remember when the Interstate Highways were being built, but I didn't start driving until later. In my area, the local highway in places became part of the I-5 construction north of Seattle. So even today, what's left of the old highway is in pieces, where it sort of parallels the freeway, then disappears, only to start up again further up the road.

Wasn't the thing about named highways was the names sometimes changed when you got to different cities? So you needed to know the name of your road in different areas. Numbers make it a lot simpler. I'm sure Route 66 fans appreciated that.

Dave
The Interstate Highway System is very easy.. odd Interstate numbers liked I-95.... North or South Travel.

Even Interstate numbers liked I-64 East and West Travel.
 

Old Hickory

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I love maps and can read one for hours. If I'm researching a driving route on Google Maps, I'll also go to the satellite view in order to read the geology/topography. And I love to travel old roads even those abandoned roads that require some hiking and bushwacking. I can remember at a very early age reading that Ben Franklin would look back over his shoulder to see where he had been so that he would recognize the path on the return. That stuck with me. And today I have a great "sense" of direction.
 

turkel

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Funny thread. I always say I am dyslexic with directions. I have to stop and think this is my right hand and this is my left. Gets comical when someone asks me which side a patient is lying on or turned toward. I have to turn the direction the patient is in to figure it out.

My DH is magic with directions. I called him once when I was lost and after some frustration on my part he said “honey make a passenger side turn at the next light then a drivers side turn onto the freeway” that was the moment I knew he was brilliant and definitely the man for me!

PS I do believe this is hereditary both my mother and uncle confessed they have to really stop and think which is their right hand or left.
 

DaveNV

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The Interstate Highway System is very easy.. odd Interstate numbers liked I-95.... North or South Travel.

Even Interstate numbers liked I-64 East and West Travel.

That's about the only thing that's consistent, for general travel. But even then, sometimes things kind of route along odd directions. And then there are the beltways that may or may not go around a metro area. I-495 in DC is an example of a good one. I-405 in Seattle is a bad one - it only goes around one side of the city. :D

Dave
 

Passepartout

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The Interstate Highway System is very easy.. odd Interstate numbers liked I-95.... North or South Travel.

Even Interstate numbers liked I-64 East and West Travel.
It's even more interesting than that. Those odd numbered North/South US highways start on the East Coast with US-1 and end on the West Coast with US-101. The lower numbers to the East and higher to the West. Interstates start on the West with I-5 and end on the East Coast with I-95. Principal ones end in 5. So I-85 is West of I-95, I-55, I-45, I-35 N/S in the midwest and from the West I-15, I-25 are the principal N/S interrstates. Those with 3 digits- odd first number are usually a 'loop' around a city, while an even number (usually a 2) for a link TO a major highway- think I-264 or I-295 from downtown out to the major intertstate.

So when you know the 'system', you can look at a small portion of a map and be able to discern from the highway numbers where in the country the place is. Because the highway system was built piecemeal there are anomalies where the numbers just don't 'fit' within the system but for the most part is works fairly well.

Jim
 
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pedro47

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I - 95 starts in the state of Maine and end in the state of Florida.
 

Passepartout

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Charles Kuralt, the iconic CBS Newsman, had a TV series called "On The Road." It was great fun to watch, as he described the interesting things found on the backroads of America. He disliked Interstate Highways, because he said they were only routes to get somewhere, often ignoring the great things that make traveling interesting. His joke was, “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.” :)

Dave

Oh, and Starbucks made it OK to spend $5 for a cup of coffee. (remember bottomless $.10 cent cups?

Thinking of those old 'named' highways. On I-80 between Laramie and Cheyenne Wyoming, on top of a pass is a giant bust of Abraham Lincoln:
1584988442636.png

I'd been trucking past there for years, and wondered WHY?

Well, it's because this spot is the highest place in elevation from coast to coast (I-80 runs seamlessly between San Francisco and New York City) on the LINCOLN Highway. U.S.-30 before the interstate.

Jim
 
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clifffaith

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I lived off of my Thomas Guide for 30 years selling window treatments. Even when generally I knew where Via Zurita was, I'd always look it up at my desk map book (older bedraggled book for my desk, a newish guide for our three vehicles) so I could put the directions in the computer. Cliff is generally better navigating when we are out in a strange area with no map, but it is generally his wife who first notices "sign said London is 129km ahead, we are not going the right direction". There is a "sneaky way" that involves an area of diagonal streets between home and my pain Doctor. Cliff goes that way every time. Every time I get turned around. He also takes residential streets ro avoid stop lights. My feeling is stick to the main streets where my brain is on auto pilot and I don't have to think about where to turn next.
 
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