timxu

Google Maps has been a very reliable tool since its inception – it’s high utility has made it practically ubiquitous in my car-going life. Today, however, it failed me.

I was driving to Paramus to proctor an SAT Practice Test, so before I left, I wanted to find a McDonald’s on the way so I can drive-thru and bring it to the classroom. After a quick search of “mcdonalds,” Google Maps gave me its usually reliable scatter of McDonald’s locations around my destination. I quickly found one that seemed on my route. It was on Rt-4 – perfect. Google Maps told me it was 247 Rt. 4, and I noted it was right before the Garden State Plaza.

When I drove by the area, there was nothing on either side of Route 4. I was quite confused. I drove all the way past the Garden State Plaza, made a U-Turn, and came back. Still nothing. I ended up going back and going to this McDonald’s, which was right past my exit. I had wasted about 10 minutes roaming around Route 4 trying to find this mystery Mickey. Instead of eating leisurely before the students came, I had to munch on french fries while they wrote their essay.

When I rolled past the McDonald’s driveway, I noticed that the address placard said “247 Rt. 4 W.” It seemed strangely familiar. When I got home, I checked the two McDonald’s locations on Google Maps. They had the same address. Then I noticed that the first one, the one I couldn’t find, was labelled an “Unverified Listing” in pale grey text. Well, I guess now it’s verified. There’s nothing there.

Now my question is: who posted this unverified listing, and why was it 1.8 miles away from the actual location?

So yesterday, a few friends and I went down to Six Flags: Great Adventure for a day. It was looking like a great trip at first, but by the end of the night, it turned out to be rather amazing and quite a great adventure. (ha. ha.) Up until 9pm, it was a fairly normal trip. We hit up all the good rides – El Toro (after a few breakdowns, it was still awesome), Nitro, Bizarro (the new Medusa), but not Kingda Ka, since it was unfortunately closed. We went on some water rides, some of the more relaxing rides – Batman, Great American Scream Machine – and chilled. It was a fairly standard affair. But at around 9 the night took a turn for the adventurous.

After getting out of the (lame) Dark Knight ride, we headed over to Nitro. By now, it was pretty much fully nighttime and we couldn’t even see the rest of Nitro in the distance. You can usually see some drops lifting out of the woods. The line was fairly quick and definitely worth it. Nitro’s intensity increases dramatically when it’s almost completely dark. It was exhilarating, but we wanted one better – El Toro.

After we got off Nitro it was 9:45. The park closes at 10. We speed walked to the SkyRide and rode its cable cars across to the El Toro side of the park. When we got off, the attendant told us we had 7 minutes. “Good luck.”

And so, in flip-flops, we sprinted. When we got to El Toro, the regular entrance was chained up, so we just followed the crowd into the Fast Pass lane and then hopped over the railing into the regular line. A security guard came up right behind us, but he didn’t say anything. Then, halfway up the line, the fireworks started. Apparently, every Saturday night over the summer there’s a fireworks show at 10. It was actually a pretty legit show with some big flowers (is that what you call them?).

By the time we got to the ride itself, the fireworks were still going. It made the ride even more epic. El toro. In the dark. With fireworks in the background. Photos are forthcoming.

When we got back to the car in the parking lot, it was about 10:30. We were tired, but exhilarated. The way out of the parking lot was basically a second parking lot. It literally took an hour to get out of the general Six Flags area (turns out there was an accident by the I-195 junction holding everyone up). After a brief pit stop at Mickey D’s, we hit the Turnpike.

It was a relatively peaceful drive northward. I had to drop my friends off in New York City, so we headed towards the Holland Tunnel. I brought along my trusty GPS, so I thought I was safe. Wrong. The GPS wanted me to go local, so I got confused and ended up making a wrong turn at the VERY confusing highway junction, and in order to turn around the GPS led me into Newark International Airport. Eventually, we made our way to the Holland Tunnel. A few moments later, we were in New York City.

A quick disclaimer here: I have never driven in New York City before, let alone by myself. It was around 1:30 at this point, and I expected the streets to be relatively clear. That was a terrible assumption. Canal Street was packed. Fortunately, the drop-off point was only a handful of blocks down Canal Street, but I did manage to cut off a NYC taxi on the way there. It was a proud moment.

After I dropped them off, I was truly alone. The Holland Tunnel closes its outbound lanes (into NJ) after 1am on weekends, so I had to detour over to the Lincoln Tunnel. This time, my trusty GPS was, indeed, trusty and led me up 3 miles of the West Side Highway towards the tunnel. Apparently, New York drivers don’t know how to stay in lane, because the guy going next to me was constantly infringing on my lane territory.

But after a traffic-light-induced jam at the approach to the tunnel, I was in. Moments later, I was back in New Jersey. Wide, open, expansive, taxi-less New Jersey. Truly a fantastic place. Half an hour later, I was home.

It had been 17.5 hours, 180 miles, and one spectacular great adventure.

On Tuesday, we left Tennessee and drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We rented a condo there for a few days, and it was right next to the beach! The water was really nice (at least for the Atlantic..) and not that cold, with big waves. It was still ridiculously hot and humid, but at least there was a constant breeze coming off the water. It made it slightly easier to deal with the heat; in fact, it was pretty comfortable, despite 90+ degree heat. We threw a football and a frisbee around on the hot sand and just chilled. It was rather picturesque, with the sound of the ocean waves and random chatter in the background.

On Wednesday we decided to check out Myrtle Beach’s world famous golf courses (apparently Myrtle Beach is the golf capital of the world – who knew?). It was the first time I’d gone golfing for real and it was pretty fun. The best part was definitely driving the golf cart around: speeding over bumps and nearly flipping over the golf cart? Great fun. I ended up shooting a +57 on the 18-hole course, which is rather noob, but I’m okay with it.

Thursday was beach day, and we spent pretty much the whole day out on the sand. The waves were pretty big, but I tried to boogie board anyway. It didn’t end well. We graduated to the pool after an afternoon in the ocean, and it was generally fun. It’s been a long time since I spent so much time in the water, but it was great. Lots of flipping and splashing and swimming all around. Yesterday we went to a nearby waterpark, which wasn’t crowded at all. There were quite a few slides, and a decent-sized wave pool. Good, relaxing fun.

This past week has been a fantastic break from the summer. Family vacations aren’t always the best, but this one was one of the better ones. It’s hard to go wrong with some relaxing fun on the beach!

In other news…fifty-seven more days until I’m back at Yale!