Stories From My Past: Driving In Boston

A few years ago at my old job, I got to go to Boston on a business trip. Boston is a beautiful, historic place. I honestly wouldn't mind going back some day. However, I will not attempt to drive there again. I would recommend the same for you, unless you have an awesome sense of direction, or perhaps a death wish.

I was there for 2 weeks, with a co-worker who I'll call Chewie. At the time, Chewie was 20, and the rental car agreement wouldn't let anyone drive who wasn't at least 21. This was unfortunate, as Chewie had a much better sense of direction than I do. In no particular order, here are some of the adventures we had on the open road in Boston.

I saw, on 4 separate occasions, a driver swerve out to the left INTO oncoming traffic, so that they could pass whole lanes of drivers who were waiting at a stop light.

I saw a one-way street change direction. I was going the correct way, and then suddenly I wasn't. There was no place to turn around.

I saw multiple places where the road changed width (2 lanes becoming 4, that sort of thing), and at those places, the lane markings on the road went away. Normal traffic flow quickly morphed into something resembling a racing video game. I kept expecting to get bumped and pushed off the road, where we'd flip over 18 times and then come to rest upside-down next to a tree with the words "Game Over" flashing on the inside of the windshield.

I saw, multiple times daily, signs describing highway exit ramps. The signs were always after the exit ramp. "You just missed highway 20."

Speaking of highway 20... I'm pretty that was the one. After traveling north on highway 20, I saw a sign at an intersection pointing left. "North Hw 20." I took the left turn. Then, many miles later, another sign, also pointing left. "North Hw 20". Confused, I took the left again. Pardon my naivete, but doesn't that mean I'm going south now?

Again, speaking of highway 20... at one point, the road forked, right down the middle. Both sides curved off gracefully, so there was no obvious "straight" and "off-ramp" to choose from. Right in the middle, the very center of the fork, was a sign that said "North Hw 20". There was no way to tell which fork it was talking about.

Sometimes, I still nightmare about highway 20.

In a residential neighborhood, I saw some pedestrians near a street corner. As we pulled up closer to the stop sign, it became apparent that these were not "normal" folk. One of them was wearing a horse's head, which made him/her/it look about 7 and a half feet tall. Several of them had capes. When they saw us pull up to the stop sign, they started waving their arms excitedly and dancing toward the car.

The stop sign was ignored. As we sped around the corner, Chewie had his head hanging out of his window shouting, "That was COOL!"

Chewie and I didn't always see eye to eye on things.

We got lost nearly every night. All we were doing was looking for a restaurant so we could eat dinner. I'm pretty sure we wound up in New Hampshire at least once by mistake. Most evenings, we ended up getting back to the hotel after 3-5 hours of confused driving. Then we'd order room service.

We drove through the campus of Harvard University. We did this at least 3 times. Never once was this our intended destination. Nice campus, though.

The final insult came as I was driving the car back to the airport for my much-anticipated flight home. There was a sign for the rental company, and as far as I could tell, it was pointing across a field. "Turn your car in a mile over that way, as the crow flies." I nearly missed my flight because I couldn't figure out where to give the dang car back. I was seriously tempted to just park it somewhere.

Actually, the FINAL final insult was a flight delay that made me miss my connecting flight in Chicago. Imagine getting off at Gate 11, and looking no more than 30 yards over at Gate 12, where the door is closed and the plane is starting to taxi to the runway. That was my flight. So close, yet so far.