Fish and Ships

On Friday, which was July 23, 2005, I went to the Baltimore Aquarium. Kudos to my roommate Dave for setting this up, as eight people went to the Aquarium. I'm not originally from Maryland, though I've lived here longer than a native Maryland preteen would have lived here.

You would have thought, by now, that I would have visited the Aquarium by now, given that it's one of Baltimore's biggest attractions. Of all the aquariums in the country, I'm told it ranks (if such a thing could be ranked) in the top five.

However, for the first ten years of living in Baltimore, several things stopped me from travelling almost anywhere. First, I can't deal with highway traffic. It's not being on the highway that bothers me, it's merging. You have maybe ten seconds to merge onto a high-speed freeway.

Would it not make sense to give those of us who'd rather take a more leisurely approach a mile or so to make this merge? Clearly the economists among road designers and those who don't think about meek drivers believe ten seconds is more than enough time to decide the traffic patterns and move right on in.

Worse still, I was horrible at directions. Unlike other teens, who reveled in the idea of driving once they turned 15, I did not, and furthermore, my parents weren't keen on having me on the road as a mid-teen. They wanted to wait until I was closer to say, oh, 90. Seriously though, I didn't drive that much until I went to college, and even then, it was the same trip to the nearby lab on some off-roads. It wasn't exactly city traffic.

And it's not like I paid much attention when I was a passenger. Even now, you can take me ten times to the same place, and I'd have no idea how to get there. I have to drive there myself in order to figure it out.

Finally, I don't use maps, even though I own plenty. It's not that I can't use a map, it's that I don't. It's just like some people's messy rooms. It's not that they can't clean it up, it's that they don't.

Perhaps I could learn to wander around and learn streets that way. Yes, but I live in the United States, and worse still, I live near Washington DC and Baltimore, which have to be like 1 and 2 in the murder capitals of the world. I've seen Bonfire of the Vanities (they should set a bonfire to that vanity, but I digress). I know what happens when you take the wrong turn. I'd like to avoid that, thank you.

There's another blog entry that I could add which is the perception non-city folks have about the relative violence in the city, which is that they're petrified. Dark skin pigmentation equates to you're about to be mugged. Thank the local news outlets for portraying that image. It's not these places are perfectly safe, but they aren't lawless either.

Several things bailed me out of a life of solitary confinement. First, I decided that I would have to get on the Beltway, because it was ridiculous that I couldn't. In fact, my first adventure was to visit Tyson's Corner. Tyson's Corner is at least a good half hour from where I live, but it is nearly the easiest place I know to get to, that is that far away.

I get on the Beltway, head into Virginia, exit off the Tyson's Corner exit, just after Dulles, move three lanes across, make a left, another left, a right, and I'm in a parking garage at Tyson's. It's that easy.

My first trip alone to Tyson's was probably 1996. Since then I've ventured other locations.

The second godsend is online map services like Yahoo Maps (which is basically Mapquest, since they all give you about the same set of directions). Now I don't require myself to use a map to figure out how to get where I need to get. It does it for me.

Oh, it's not without its flaws. For example, while I can follow these directions, I have no idea where the major roads are relative to each other. I know 495. I know 270. I know 95. I sorta know 295. That's it. There are bunches of other nearly major roads that I have no idea about. The average driver figures them out within two months of living in a new location. I've been here fifteen years.

That means if I ever get lost, I'm screwed. Well, that's not entirely true because I can always wander around until I see a major road, and worse gets to worse, I can always ask for directions. If I had a sense of more major roads, or if I wandered more, I'd know how to get out of more problems. At least, in certain parts of Maryland, I can wander til I see something familiar (and that can be a while), and get to where I need to get to.

In fact, the next thing I really need technology to bail me out on is to provide me a smart GPS. The smart GPS will not only tell me where I need to go, and make corrections when I make wrong turns, but it will inform me of major roads. Like "this is 270 you dolt...remember this road, because everyone uses it".

But do you know what I really want? I want a video game that is a driving game, and allows me to drive throughout a real city using real landmarks, real traffic and so on. No more getting lost in new cities. This can clearly be done. I hearby copyright this idea.

Goodness, this is getting so long that I have yet to describe the trip to the Aquarium, a trip you might think I actually drove, but in reality, I did not. I was a passenger the whole time, I got hammered at a tiny dive somewhere near the Inner Harbor I'd imagine, and spent most of the time trying to doze away.

But I'll leave that for the next installment.