A while back, an old friend from out of town suggested that a bunch of us meet up for a meal. It'd been a while since I'd seen some of these folks, so I was quick to agree to this plan. Now, we all grew up together, but we don't all still live in the same city. We're still in the Bay Area, but not in the same city. Ultimately, this would make things very, very interesting.
First of all, we had to figure out when we were all free. Frankly, this always feels a little bit like herding cats. I don't think it's necessarily these people that make this task hard, since I've definitely racked up a few interesting stories about coordinating social events with others involved. Still, it took several emails back and forth to settle on a date and time. At one point during the process, I even got yelled at for not responding to the email thread fast enough. Still, we ultimately settled on a date and sorted out what everyone was going to bring. It only took about 80 emails (there was a LOT of side-banter).
Of course, since everyone had enjoyed themselves so much during this outing, everyone insisted that we should do it again. For the second outing, we figured we'd switch up the venue just a tad. After all, there was no point in making the same person drive two times in a row. So instead of meeting up in the city, we decided to meet up in the East Bay. Seeing that several of us would be driving there and back, we decided to carpool.
The plan was pretty straight forward: meet up in one spot to make things easy for the person driving, and then leave from there. We all got there at the appointed time, but my brother, who had driven that exact same road about an hour before, warned me that traffic was going to be bad. I mentioned this to a couple others, but there wasn't much we could do.
So, we headed out into certain traffic. We knew it was going to be bad, but we didn't think it was going to be THAT bad. It was pretty close to a parking lot for a good long while, and that was before we even got close to the Bay Bridge. Like I said, it was bad. Given that, someone suggested that we cut through the city roads in order to avoid some of the traffic. The person driving didn't quite know how to do this, but one of the others reassured her that he'd guide her through this. So, our intrepid driver took the next exit.
Feeling pretty proud of ourselves for our bold move, we joked and chatted as the backseat driver guided the front-seat driver. After she exited, he told her to get into a lane that happened to split. There were two cars in front of us, an SUV and a pickup truck. In an effort to keep things simple for the driver, my friend simply told her to "follow the SUV." The driver nodded her assent ... and then proceeded to follow the pickup truck.
Confused, someone asked her where she was going. As became quickly obvious, she didn't actually know the difference between a pick up truck and an SUV. Now, this is one very, very smart woman. She has an educational pedigree to die for, and she once get lectured that taking a six-figure job in the corporate world would be a "step down for her." And since we were all curious about this curious gap in her knowledge, we asked her if she knew about the other types of vehicles. Apparently, she did. She could adequately explain the difference between a coupe and a sedan, which we all thought was a more arcane piece of knowledge.
Still, what was done was done. The wrong lane had actually managed to get us back on to the freeway, so all in all, we had avoided all of about half a mile of traffic. It hadn't actually made things worse in any way, but it didn't really save us any time, either. Also, we had lost our opportunity to take a side route, so we were locked in to our route at that point. We pretty much had to just wait out the traffic.
Of course, by that point, the chatter in the car had turned a lot more interesting. There was a lot of laughter, and quite a bit of discussion about what was and was not an acceptable direction for the driver. We ended up being close to an hour late, but the other folks were awfully gracious about it. Also, given that we showed up with a really amusing story to tell, they were more than willing to laugh it all off.
Oh, and for the record, an SUV doesn't usually have a huge truck bed.
First of all, we had to figure out when we were all free. Frankly, this always feels a little bit like herding cats. I don't think it's necessarily these people that make this task hard, since I've definitely racked up a few interesting stories about coordinating social events with others involved. Still, it took several emails back and forth to settle on a date and time. At one point during the process, I even got yelled at for not responding to the email thread fast enough. Still, we ultimately settled on a date and sorted out what everyone was going to bring. It only took about 80 emails (there was a LOT of side-banter).
Of course, since everyone had enjoyed themselves so much during this outing, everyone insisted that we should do it again. For the second outing, we figured we'd switch up the venue just a tad. After all, there was no point in making the same person drive two times in a row. So instead of meeting up in the city, we decided to meet up in the East Bay. Seeing that several of us would be driving there and back, we decided to carpool.
The plan was pretty straight forward: meet up in one spot to make things easy for the person driving, and then leave from there. We all got there at the appointed time, but my brother, who had driven that exact same road about an hour before, warned me that traffic was going to be bad. I mentioned this to a couple others, but there wasn't much we could do.
So, we headed out into certain traffic. We knew it was going to be bad, but we didn't think it was going to be THAT bad. It was pretty close to a parking lot for a good long while, and that was before we even got close to the Bay Bridge. Like I said, it was bad. Given that, someone suggested that we cut through the city roads in order to avoid some of the traffic. The person driving didn't quite know how to do this, but one of the others reassured her that he'd guide her through this. So, our intrepid driver took the next exit.
Feeling pretty proud of ourselves for our bold move, we joked and chatted as the backseat driver guided the front-seat driver. After she exited, he told her to get into a lane that happened to split. There were two cars in front of us, an SUV and a pickup truck. In an effort to keep things simple for the driver, my friend simply told her to "follow the SUV." The driver nodded her assent ... and then proceeded to follow the pickup truck.
Confused, someone asked her where she was going. As became quickly obvious, she didn't actually know the difference between a pick up truck and an SUV. Now, this is one very, very smart woman. She has an educational pedigree to die for, and she once get lectured that taking a six-figure job in the corporate world would be a "step down for her." And since we were all curious about this curious gap in her knowledge, we asked her if she knew about the other types of vehicles. Apparently, she did. She could adequately explain the difference between a coupe and a sedan, which we all thought was a more arcane piece of knowledge.
Still, what was done was done. The wrong lane had actually managed to get us back on to the freeway, so all in all, we had avoided all of about half a mile of traffic. It hadn't actually made things worse in any way, but it didn't really save us any time, either. Also, we had lost our opportunity to take a side route, so we were locked in to our route at that point. We pretty much had to just wait out the traffic.
Of course, by that point, the chatter in the car had turned a lot more interesting. There was a lot of laughter, and quite a bit of discussion about what was and was not an acceptable direction for the driver. We ended up being close to an hour late, but the other folks were awfully gracious about it. Also, given that we showed up with a really amusing story to tell, they were more than willing to laugh it all off.
Oh, and for the record, an SUV doesn't usually have a huge truck bed.
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