Adventures in Driving

A couple of weeks ago, T and I drove down to Baltimore for a viewing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. A friend, J, had rented out a private room at the Senator Theatre for the screening, with socializing, munching, and drinking arranged to amuse us from 6 to 7:30, when the movie was slated to begin. I hurried home from work – stressed and tense because I’d left later than I had hoped – changed my clothes, and T and I were on the road by 5:25.

We made excellent time, hitting no traffic and veering onto 695 E toward Towson, like the Mapquest directions advised, by 6:35. As T’s car zoomed along and we talked oh-so-intellectually about our opinions on the afterlife, I noticed our exit just as we passed it.

“Oh, we were supposed to get to off there,” I said with a chuckle. T got off at the next available exit, turned around in a hotel parking lot, and merged directly back onto the highway in the same direction we were already going. After more chuckling and “Ah…idiots” musings, we got off at the next exit and quickly drove past the ramp to get onto 695 in the correct direction. T turned around again and aimed to get on 695 West.

“Wait! Don’t get on there,” I said, with growing paranoia. “Weren’t we just coming from that direction?”

T indulged me, and pretty soon, because I was wrong and T should have just ignored me, we were turning around in the exact same hotel parking lot we were in when we got off the highway the first time. By this time, my brain was getting more and more scrambled, and I started saying “I don’t know” to any question T asked about the directions.

We managed to get back to the original exit we had missed, and as we approached the top of the ramp, T asked me which direction we should turn.

“I honestly have no idea,” I said. “I am so confused.” He picked left, then I insisted we follow the signs for Charles Street, then I announced happily that we were approaching Bellona Ave., one of the streets listed on my Mapquest directions. We turned right, because that’s what my directions said, and wound our way through a residential area, coming to Joppa Rd.

My intuitive awesomeness kicked in to say “Wrong direction again, ass,” and so I called my friend J to ask for advice.

“We’re at Joppa and Bellona,” I said.

“Yeeeeah… You’re in Towson,” J said. “You want to be in Baltimore. What direction are you headed?”

I have no effing clue, I thought. “Um… we’re going… straight? On Bellona?”

“Well, you want to go west on Joppa,” J said.

He might as well have said, “Well, you want to florb the flimcrackle Joppa.” My internal compass sucks. I informed J of this, and he recommended just retracing our tracks, getting back on 83, and taking that into Baltimore.

I told T that this was the new plan, and his head exploded.

Actually, he just turned around with minor grumbling. Back where we started, we realized that we had been heading the wrong way on Charles, and suddenly my scribbled directions made sense. With renewed determination – and a lot of relief on my part – we forged ahead. And ahead. And ahead. My relief turned to uncertainty. We found York Road, on which the Senator is located, and I called information to find out the number of the building. “It’s either 200 or 2000,” I confidently told T as I dialed, then sheepishly turned to him after my 411 call. “5904,” I said.

“Wow, you couldn’t have been more wrong,” he replied.

We turned around on York Road, since the numbers were going down and we needed them to be going up. Somewhere around 1900, I noticed that we were really close to the neighborhood where J used to live, which is in Cockeysville, not Baltimore. Then the numbers jumped to the 10-thousands, along with my blood pressure.

“What the fuck?” I cried. “Did we pass it?”

I was verging on hysterics by this point, having grown increasingly edgy as we started passing familiar Cockeysville landmarks, sure signs that we were not anywhere near our city destination.

“It’s okay, we’ll just turn around,” soothed T. “And we’ll either pass it, or find out that it doesn’t exist and this was all an elaborate joke.”

10105…10100…Twilight Zone…1940…1930…

We gave up and turned around YET AGAIN to get to 695 to 83, and we were finally headed in the right direction. As we drove, I told T that the overall price of our tickets was $12, not $3 as I’d mistakenly told him.

His laughter faded as he looked at my face and saw that I was earnest.

“Wait, you’re serious?” he asked incredulously.

(Side note: It’s not that $12 is outrageously expensive. It’s that on top of driving in circles for an hour after a 70-mile drive to Baltimore to see a movie that’s certainly playing where we live, there’s an even bigger gap between $6 and $24.)

As I took in T’s incredulity, I started to giggle. And giggle. And giggle. Until the chuckles turned into full-on hysterics, complete with tears.

“Yeah!” I laughed and cried. Gasping for breath, I asked T if he just wanted to turn around and go home.

“Hell no,” he declared. “We are getting to that movie even if we’re an hour late!”

We were only about 10 minutes late. Dudley was making out with a dementor when we arrived and took our seats in the pitch-black private room, perched above the main theatre.

We saw our friends for a few minutes after the movie ended, ate some Twizzlers and Bertie Botts Every Flavor beans, then drove home. Uneventfully. And the next time I drive to Baltimore, I’m buying a damn Garmin first.