What was your worst experience getting lost?

I used to have a job which required travel, and I had to go to a hospital in Western Pennsylvania. After flying to Pittsburgh I rented a car and started following the mapquest directions I had printed out.

I thought I was going the right way until I saw the big sign which said "Welcome to West Virginia"...

I was 10 and they drove to the border and I was walking around the streets of a city outside of Toronto.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=3250118&mesg_id=3250645&page=
Unfortunately, I get lost driving all the time. I suppose that is one reason that I don't drive alone very much.

I had an interview 2 weeks ago- instead of giving me directions I had to meet the recruiter at his office. Its this young guy in a sporty car and he never discusses which route he's taking, he just says, "don't worry I won't lose you". I took a pretty good guess towards the first part of the trip but I lost him after about 5 miles. We eventually sorted it out but I was almost an hour late to the interview, and I didn't get the job (which involved travelling to 4 different sites!)

:scared:

I headed down one of those streets with all the circles to take a friend home. She directed me to her house. I headed back home and went a mile past my house. I headed back and again went too far. I ended up going back and forth for about an hour. The circles just totally confused me. Finally, I took the long way home and found my apartment. I'm very, very bad at directions. I need a map every time.

I had two very young children in my car. 2 1/2 and 6 months I think. I was going to visit my brothers with my mother. She had been there once before and told me it was easy to find my brothers apartment and we did not need a map because she knew the way. We got there and she didn't know crap about the way, she was looking for landmarks that were no longer there. I could see his building but could not get off the highway and he was not home to call. I was SO pissed. Then we went from there to San Antonio and she said she had a map but she did not. I was freaking out and she said we will just stop and ask some "nice man" or we could pull over and wave and some "nice man" would stop. I wanted to kill her, just push her out of my moving car. The nice men we asked did not speak English or didn't to us. I finally stopped at a gas station to get a map and she was so pissed at me that she went out to flag down a car by pulling up her skirt over her thigh. Yes, she was a real piece of work that woman. She did not speak to me for 3 days at the Alamo and Sea World with my two babies in tow. It was a wonderful trip.

we could pull over and wave and some "nice man" would stop

Sorry for laughing... I just thought that was funny...

Just pull over on the highway and start waving your arms in the air, hoping somebody will stop and you can ask them directions...

Hehehehehe

:dunce:

I don't mean any disrespect. please forgive me.. I just find that mental picture pretty funny.

:-)

Heyo

if she had not done it! She did that when she had a flat tire once and I was with her on my hands and knees trying to jack up her car in the dirt and there she was shaking her leg at truckers.

No problem. She was just such a weenie. Having been widowed at 42 I would have thought she would have been more independant but when men were around she became Miss Whatever you please you sweet cute hunk a man! My husband loved her. :puke: It is OK to laugh, if I saw someone on the road doing that I would laugh too.

i meant to drive over all three bridges across the SF bay. so there!

no, actually, that never happened. but it would suck, wouldn't it?

up wrong on a cross country flight in 1967.. I flew into a restricted zone over a little national guard strip and a helicopter chased me off..I hit the deck and took off full throttle, their helos were not much in those days. i was still lost and saw a kid riding a bike on a country road... i flew real slow about 100 feet above him and cut the throttle and yelled out the window.. "which way to Turlock"..?? he pointed down the road and i waved and headed off real low in case the National Guard was still looking for me.

I found a little town and got down about 20 feet off the ground and was trying to read the town name on the sign that has the name and population on it... i had to fly by 2 times.. i finally figured out where i was and landed in Modesto.. i bought a road map at a gas station at the field and used it to fly down the right roads to home.. that is what they mean my VFR navigation.

It wasn't my worst experience, but it ws my most interesting.

We had a pretty interesting jaunt around Amsterdam early in the morn!

and they each thought I was with the other. I eventually told the manager and he walked me up to a cardboard advertising display with a man and a woman on it and asked me if those were my parents!

Greyhound bus in Omaha in 1969. I wound up hitchhiking and made it home in just two rides. I was lost in Nebraska for hours.

I went on a hike/camping trip with my youth group. After we'd make camp, people did there own thing. A bunch of people went to climb the ridge of the mountain. Several of us stayed at camp to swim.

You can only swim in a glacier lake for so long. I decided to go for a walk and take pictures. I headed up the opposite side of the ridge from everyone else. I wanted to get a bit higher so I could get a better picture of the lake. I kept doing that.

Eventually, there was a face I scaled (with no ropes) and climbed with fingers and toes. I got my picture, but then I couldn't get down. I thought I'd just go along the ridge and go down the other side.

Eventually, I found myself at the peak. I couldn't go forward, and I couldn't go back. I could see everyone else back at camp and vaguely hear them yelling at me. They were telling me to come down. I thought they meant right there. It was the front face of the ridge. I attempted it a bit and then gave up. It's amazing I didn't kill myself.

It was beginning to get dark and all I could do was pace back and forth. Eventually, one of the leaders realized I was in trouble and came and got me and led me down.

I mean, it's one of those things that could have haunted you for awhile.

You can get in BIG trouble with seemingly innocent steps. 'Just a little more. Just a little more.' Before you know it, you're stuck on top of a mountain and it's getting dark.

Another fellow and I got lost while out in the bush in Viet Nam. It was in, or near to, the Central Highlands (probably Kontum Province but we may have stumbled in Laos or Cambodia) in late 1967. Because our radio was dead and no one knew were were were we came very close to being MIA due to friendly fire. We quite literally stumbled onto an "Arc-light" which was the name used for a B52 strike made up primarily of 500 pound HE bombs. We were about a quarter mile away from the center of the path of the drop, which was itself about a quarter of a mile long. I can not describe to you what it was like other than to say that to this day I do not remember any sound but that all the world was sound and that nothing in the path of those bombs, and I mean absolutely nothing, lived through it. Not a tree, not a bush, not a man, not a single animal, not so much as a bug as far as I could see.

Once upon a time in a land far far away .... but certainly no god damned fairy tale.

T

the jungle, to which I can relate.

But what you are describing is LOST on so many levels... it must have been very frightening.

For starters, I am a total idiot when it comes to getting around anywhere. I just have no natural direction sense at all. So if I am someone I haven't driven at least a half-dozen or so times, it goes without saying I'm going to get lost.

I went and campaigned in Milwaukee last fall and got lost several times. Pretty much did it all: taking wrong exits, getting lost on streets that changed their names or became one-way out of the blue, etc. It's not as big a deal getting lost when you have someone with you or you don't have to be to any place at a certain time (or at least if it's not THAT important that you get there by a certain time); I have learned to enjoy it. But if you're supposed to be somewhere and you get lost and panic, you're pretty much screwed, I have learned.

I have wondered before if it's possible to acquire direction sense, because my lack of it is one of the things I am most disappointed in about myself. I don't think it is, and what's worse is that it seems to be hereditary, so if I ever have children (which looks unlikely at this point, at least) I'm sure they will be screwed with my lack of direction sense, too...

eek! :scared:

they found me two hours later :P

Its a good thing somebody was counting...

they were ready to pull out too :P

I have only been in the wrong place at the wrong time.:P

:P