Elder Son has finished his medical school career at Mt. Sinai in Manhattan. He spent April doing a one month family practice rotation at a clinic in Duluth affiliated with the University of Minnesota there; right now he is in the first week of month-long family practice rotation at a clinic in Lawrence, Massachusetts. As a graduation present we provided him with a car, which he will now need, Lawrence being 25 miles or so from where he is staying in Boston.
::cue ominous music::
He has called home for the past three nights requesting me to go onto Google maps and direct him to that Boston residence .
I had heard long ago that Boston was a terrible city to drive in — one-way streets that come to a dead end being the example that was given. I cannot vouch for that specific situation, but Google maps has shown me a multitude of one-way streets, sometime, often, meeting head-on. No grid pattern of streets and almost no right angle intersection. Any number of way to get from the outlying areas to downtown but damned few easy ways to get anywhere else.
We will mail him a GPS today.
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Note: I wrote this Tuesday night but Typepad was broken and remained so until now. I, and many others, wrote to their help site starting last night. Now, hours later, they finally fixed it.
Hi everyone,
Thanks for reporting the issue! Unfortunately, we do have to sleep sometimes, and at the time of the initial report, it was almost midnight on the east coast and we were closed. We tackled things just as soon as we opened this morning, and the issue is now fixed.
Get it together, Typepad. In case you hadn't noticed, the internet is as 24/7 operation. Sleep is not an excuse.
kmkat & her kneedles 
Ummm, yeah. That’s what happens when you turn cow paths into city roads. He’ll get used to it.
Ah, yes, cities that are old enough to be pre-land survey…
Typepad is based on the west coast. WTF?!
Yes – my friend Rosemary, whom you met at YO, has a son who went to school in Boston…apparently the Boston Commons is where everyone let their cows graze together, and the steets are the paths (see Carole’s comment) that were used from everyone’s homesteads to said Commons.
Plus, ducks don’t operate on grids, so it worked in Make Way for Ducklings … &$@!# the cars!
Oh, my word. I won’t drive in Boston. Madman won’t drive in Boston. When we have to be in Boston, we whine to a friend of ours who lives near Boston and can drive in Boston, and he graciously chauffeurs us around.
I would rather gouge out my eyes with a size 10 needle than drive in Boston…
Cow path’s as roads are such fun. Hope the GPS helps when it arrives.
Thanks for the Kingston Trio link. This has been a favorite song since I was little.
….until the gps maps fail you – but thats my fault because I never update them & all the roads in the Twin Cities have been changing rapidly!
Sleep, like failure, is not an option.
He finished medical school? Congratulations to him!
There is a train that goes between Boston and Lawrence. I have a friend that takes it back and forth from Andover (right next to Lawrence).
The other option, of course, is to live closer to Lawrence… He’s a bright boy, I’m sure he knows that.
http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/rail/lines/stations/?stopId=102
I’m from Boston. And what your commenters said 😉 I’m guessing he’s about done now. Where’s the next rotation?