I’ve been talking to this girl Kait I met on Facebook for a couple weeks,so naturally we decided it was time to meet in person. And since she doesn’t/can’t drive, it was clear who was going to be making the 3.5 hour drive! :D
So I make the massive drive, starting out at about 10:30 or so. Somehow, I don’t make it there until just before 3am. The directions tell me to turn on Casey Avenue, then take a left on East Northampton Street. I got to Casey Ave, and… there is no E Northampton St! So I frantically text Kait, asking for help.
No response.
So I decide to look up Northampton St using the internet on my phone. It seems simple enough: just find Main Street, then turn on Northampton St. Now, where is Main St?
I look for an hour. No Main Street.
I text Kait again. No response. This worries me… what if she fell asleep??
I find a street called Wilkes-Barre Blvd. I turn on this, figuring if I take any street north, I will find Main Street. This plan fails with the first two streets I tried becoming dead ends, but the third street did indeed take me to Main Street.
What kind of city has MAIN STREET so hard to find??!?!?!
Also, you would have to see it to believe it, but Wilkes-Barre is an amazingly sloppy city. Imagine a fun game of Pick-up Sticks. You drop all the sticks and they form a tangled pile on the floor. Well now imagine those sticks are roads and you basically have Wilkes-Barre.
I think I might have seen a total of one 90-degree angle intersection there. Also, they have a funny traffic pattern where one of the lanes MUST always turn left or right, and I kept ending up in that lane, despite the fact that I wanted to go straight.
So in any case, I’m driving on Main Street, and after defeating the town square by driving in the left lane, I located Northampton Street and turned left. Now I was on track!! So I looked at my directions: the next turn was Hillside Street. So I drove slowly up the street, looking for Hillside. Passing some more insane intersections, one of which being Wilkes-Barre Blvd, which means I could have avoided the entire Main Street debacle, I could not locate Hillside St! A few miles up the road, the houses suddenly stopped and were replaced by forest. I thought maybe Hillside St was a little further up, so I kept going. The road suddenly got very steep and going in a broad circle, and I realized I was driving over a mountain. Not gonna lie, I’m scared of driving over mountains. And I couldn’t turn around! The road was too narrow, and if this mountain was anything like Mt. McConnellsburg, one slip and you’d plunge down to your death. Plus it was dark (4:30am) and foggy so it was basically not fun. Somehow I made it to the top and turned around there, and made my way back down. Still no sign of Hillside St. I ended up going back to the very tiny and VERY difficult to use map on my phone and was looking for alternate routes when I accidentally found Hillside St. It was at a 45-degree angle bisecting the intersection already formed by Northampton and Empire Streets. And it was angled AWAY from the direction I was going, so I had to pass it, turn around, then turn on it.
After that, the last 2 streets were relatively simple. So I found Kait’s house… all dark. And there was nowhere to park. So I drove BACK down to Wilkes-Barre Blvd and parked in the McDonald’s parking lot. There, I fell asleep. It was 5am.
At about 9am I woke up — with about 10 text messages. All were from Kait. Apparently she had woken up at 5:10 or so and realized she had left me all alone. She ran outside looking for a beige car with Maryland plates… she couldn’t find one. Apparently then she thought I might me dead, and sent such text messages as “AARON PLEASE” to me in a panic. When I woke up I texted her back…then fell back asleep.
At 10am I woke up again and drove up to Kait’s. I got out of my car and she looked exactly how I thought she would. She was sitting outside waiting for me. So we talked awhile, explored the empty house next door to hers which a guy was in the process of remodeling until he dropped dead, and found out that I’m not really a guy. Then we went to Red Robin, where I’ve been DYING to go and try their 5-alarm burger. I did–and it was GREAT. I told Kait she should try it but she had to be a woman and get salad. (The next day she got sick due to her incorrect choice.)
Sadly I had to leave after that. I wish I could’ve stayed longer but I had to get home. It’s a good thing I left before I got even more tired. Because as soon as I got back I collapsed into bed and fell asleep in minutes. :)
