It was shortly after 4 AM one early morning fifteen summers ago that the Portland Sea Dogs team bus pulled into Hadlock Field's parking lot following a drive of ten hours or so. Thirty or so large men trooped off it. Most of us were stretching our cramped muscles and wiping sleep from our eyes.
Okay. Most of them were stretching their cramped muscles; all of us were wiping the sleep from our eyes. (I hate the "full disclosure" clause we journalists are bound to conform to!)
Most of the team personnel returning from Reading, Canton, Harrisburg or wherever that particular road trip had ended wearily headed for their cars.
But Billy McMillon and Pookie Wilson didn't have an automobile, and the apartment they had rented for the season was located at the distant end of Forest Avenue. Neither wanted to waste the time or cash necessary to procure the services of a taxi, so when one of them asked the team's radio announcer if he'd take them home he (I) happily obliged. I'd have helped anyone in that predicament, but was particularly glad to be of service to the two outfielders, both of whom had always given me nothing but cooperation, courtesy, and respect. After the two shoehorned their way into my spacious 1989 Hyundai Excel we took a left onto Park Street and began the trip home.
I had been in Maine for nearly three months, which was approximately a week longer than either of them had been. Aside from having memorized the eight-mile route from where I was living in Cumberland to the ballpark, my knowledge of the greater Portland area was severely limited. However, thanks partly to clear and precise instructions from my passengers and an utter absence of traffic at that hour we made it to their apartment without incident. After the two had extricated themselves from the car one of them asked, "Do you know how to get home from here?" Certain that I did I gave them a thumbs-up and confidently drove off.
Less than a mile later I was utterly disoriented, and with each successive turn onto an unfamiliar road became even more flustered. Making the predicament even more dire: at that hour there wasn't anyone around to ask for assistance. (And if someone was walking along a rural road with which you're unfamiliar at 5 AM, would you really want to stop and ask him for directions?)
When I arrived home nearly two hours later the sun was up. According to my odometer I had driven 44 miles to get from Portland to Cumberland. That's pretty tough to do unless you go through Windham, Gray, Gorham, and a few other surrounding towns, which apparently I did. At one point I had to turn around after getting onto a dirt road that dead-ended into what appeared to be the side of a mountain. During the night's ordeal I angrily cursed the fates, God, Allah, Buddha, the person who invented the automobile, and the doctor who removed me from my mother's womb. Why wasn't their some way for navigationally challenged people like me to move from place to place without getting hopelessly lost?
But today there is! A device called a GPS (Global Positioning System) makes a traumatic evening like the one I experienced in 1995 a thing of the past. And for those too fiscally prudent to invest in such instruments there's MapQuest, an internet service that provides precise directions from any point A to Point B. How accurate? It told me exactly which country roads to take in order to make the 198 mile trip to my sister's house in Essex Junction, Vermont in four hours and 40 minutes, but also provided a 263-mile alternate route that'd allow me to get there in four hours and 35 minutes. It informed me that my 34.74 mile trip to work should take me 43 minutes, but my commute home, while a slightly more lengthy 34.88 miles, should take a mere 41 minutes. Thanks to MapQuest I've learned I probably won't be traveling by road between two of my favorite places, St. John's, Newfoundland and San Diego, California. To do so would take 78 hours and seven minutes of driving time, since the two cities are located 4544.49 miles apart from one another. However, I will continue to pay frequent visits to my neighbors across the street, since MapQuest testifies the .02 mile journey from our home to theirs takes only three seconds.
Some say MapQuest ultimately does society a disservice by further chipping away at the once-keen innate sense of direction past generations of human beings possessed. I disagree, but that's for another time. Right now I'm getting hungry, so I think I'll MapQuest directions from my computer to the refrigerator upstairs.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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