I’m good when I’m in familiar territory and can almost always figure it out when I’m in an unfamiliar place…I don’t think it’s ignorance or stupidity, BTW. Just that some people have a better “internal” compass than others; which may be either enhanced, or become less accurate due to misuse, depending on where that person lives.
Now that I think of it, when I’m outside it’s easy. Put me inside - a big casino, a shopping mall - and I *completely *lose my internal sense of direction.
This is my biggest headache on road trips.
You’ll see exits for I440 North and I440 South. Which do you take?
You have to look at the map and you discover 440 doesn’t run true North or South. It’s sort of slanted in that general direction. Now, Try doing that with the map in your lap, driving 70mph.
It’s a PITA. I always try to makes notes for my trips. Which direction are my roads are going. So I know the right exit to use.
No I don’t have GPS. Don’t want it either.
I picked “no” but I’m not as bad off as Dr.Drake.
If for some reason I know North, I can figure out the other directions.
But I’m not like my mother, I don’t have an internal compass, and generally find directions based on compass points irritating.
My mother has a good internal compass. Or at least did until she started living in a place based more on a circle.
I was a bit harsh in my criticsm; I don’t mean to diss folks who really don’t have a good innate sense of direction…you can’t help that. I was referring to folks who are willfully ignorant of geography/navigation. Actually, I don’t know…I think I’m just lamenting the lost sense of importance given to geography, and am a bit frustrated by it.
I also agree with Aceplace57, the n/s highway/exit stuff is a PITA, because it doesn’t always square with the actual direction. I think they should just stick to hwy#/next major town or area format on exit signs.
Yes, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the north star isn’t just a name.
I voted yes, always, but that’s slightly misleading. I make a practice of keeping track of the points of the compass, and if I happen to realize that I don’t know it in a given location, I try to immediately rectify that. But I have to find a known point first and it takes a moment or seventeen.
Of the Rhymer siblings, my baby sister and older brother both possess slightly freakish talent in that area. Baby Sister in particular seems to know the points of the compass either intuitively or can orient herself so quickly it seems instantaneous to everyone but her. Our elder brother isn’t as fast as she is, but he’s much faster than me.
Sure. West is toward the beach–4 hours away–east is away from the beach! I’m usually better at compass directions than left and right, which easily confuse me (I often have to look at my hands, figure out which one I write with, and go from there).
I get lost in really unfamiliar places, and I’m pretty much always lost in Sacramento, but otherwise it’s all about the compass points.
Oh yeah, I’m a lifelong California girl, if you need that data point.
I think mostly to put on airs (and to have a legal description of property). I grew up in a small town (less than 1,000 people). I knew that the streets had names, but there were no street signs until I was maybe 12 (so +/- 1970) or so (I knew there were names because my dad had a map of the city in his law office).
In hindsight, we were channeling Steve Martin (“the phone books are here! the phone books are here!”), but we spent a good chunk of the summer the signs were put up racing around town on our bikes, figuring out what streets our friends lived on and their house number (as people started putting numbers on their houses).
I think it’s now a federal law (or suggestion, at any rate) that all roads and houses have names and numbers (mostly for fire and ambulance, I believe), leading to country roads having stree signs of things like “303 St”.
This reminds me of an argument I once had with a beau. We had JUST moved in together…it was literally our first night together. We’d just arrived at the new place from a different state, long after dark. For some reason the subject of which way the front windows faced came up, and I went outside and proclaimed we faced east. He thought it faced west. What should have been a simple disgreement turned into a harbinger of our next year together, as he insisted, for various intellectual reasons, why we couldn’t possibly be facing east. I had nothing to back me up; I just knew it was east. Boy, was he pissy the next morning.
I have good direction sense, despite not being able to explain it logically. I’m one of those ‘I can’t tell you how to get there but I could take you there in a snowstorm in the middle of the night’ people. I may not know where I am, but if I know where I’m going I always get there. 
No reason to ever question when you are anywhere near civilization. Up here, satellite dishes always point south.
State street and Main don’t intersect, Your going to have to take a right on On Stadium before you get to Main, then the left , then then you go past Church.
While that’s true, I inadvertently did it again in my example here: I meant to type the opposite direction. I was planning to go north (towards Canada) and I knew where everything was on a map. I was driving in San Diego, where I was born and raised. I was going west on highway 8. So when I followed the exit sign reading “5 South,” I had transposed the words in my head, reading “south” as “north.” The south exit really did lead south. To make it worse, at that point you are right beside the San Diego river, which flows west into the Pacific Ocean nearby, and I was driving into the setting sun. So there’s really no excuse.
I should also point out, that even though I’m good with directions, if I’m inside a building, I’m totally lost. My bearings are completely shot. For example, my family owns a business, I know the building like the back of my hand, I’ve crawled around in every nook and cranny in that place, but if you come in and ask for directions to the freeway I’ll start by saying “Let’s walk outside” since it’s easier for me to point in the directions you need to turn. If I do it from inside I’m likely to send you in completely the wrong direction. The turns will all be correct, but I might start you off going Left instead of down or West instead of straight.
I have no trouble, even if I’m deep inside a building with no windows to check.
Some of the phone books for which I draw the street maps also include restaurant guides, with dots on a map of town to show the location of the businesses. Google and Bing maps have made my job a lot easier, but sometimes I still have to call a restaurant to try to figure out which side of the road it’s on. I call and briefly explain who I am, then start by asking “are you on the east side of the road or the west side.” If a woman answers, she will inevitably say “well, it depends on which way you’re coming from.”
And bare stole my triumph of geekdom. Driving through Nova Scotia a few years ago I realized I’d taken a wrong turn because the satellite dishes were all on the wrong side of the houses.
I’ve always assumed it must be a real PITA for people in Illinois. There’s a major freeway called I94. You are either on 94 West or 94 East which is actually North or South. Once you get into Milwaukee it makes a hard left turn and actually travels West and East.
I was surprised once when I called an accident (or something similar) in to 911 once and told the dispatcher I was on 94 East (this was just south of Milwaukee) and what exit I was passing. She asked me if I was Northbound or Southbound. I repeated I was on 94 EAST. She told me 94 doesn’t travel East at my location. Well, no kidding, just, but that’s what the sign says. Luckily I wasn’t some random out of towner with no sense of direction and was able to tell her I was traveling south bound. But any emergency vehicle would have know what 94E meant.
“Oh, sorry, I’ll be coming from the West”
Or
“Oh, sorry, I’ll be coming from the Right”
I’m always good with compass points, and if I have to orient myself, I just use my watch:
What do you do with a watch whose digits say “10:15”?
directions given with right/left get less valuable after a wrong turn. directions based on the compass are still good after a wrong turn.
I said “sometimes.”
I am pretty good at directions and maps and such-like, but I find that occasionally I will walk down a road that has a subtle curve or angle to it that disorients me by the time I get out the other side. I may have started out going generally East, but end up facing generally North, which if I’m not paying attention can get me “lost.”
I tend to pay attention to the sun, which here in the Southern Hemisphere, is northerly, and helps me get my bearings. This does mean I have to think about it sometimes, hence my choice.