Where am I?

 

Long road trip.

I’m in the car, two dogs in the back seat, adding miles on a journey down the east coast of the United States. Sunrise arrived not too long ago, and the northern Georgia state line is in our rearview mirror as we head south across the Peach State.

Not sure what to listen to for a bit, and looking to change things up as I settle in for the remaining four-plus hours of driving, I find a local NPR station. A few minutes later, the local weather is updated during a break, and that’s where the fun begins.

I didn’t know where I was.

Now, yes, good catch. I did know where I was. In a car, with two dogs, driving south on interstate 95. The exits and signs for Savannah were behind me. And, you’ll fully agree if you know this run of highway, I was navigating a one-hundred-twelve-mile stretch of Georgia nothingness all the way to the Florida line.

However.

No clue what cities and towns I was passing. No idea of the counties involved. I could check out the roadside mile markers to provide something of a location, but for some definitive placement like a zip code or town name there wasn’t a chance I had the foggiest notion of where I was. Which…

…made it slightly uncomfortable when the person delivering the forecast in the weather report began listing off counties facing severe weather warnings and recommending seeking shelter.

I had checked out the weather hours earlier before I set off on this adventure. I knew there was rain and wind expected in Pennsylvania and Georgia during my drive. But at that moment the rain wasn’t falling and the winds weren’t blowing. All of the other cars were continuing along, showing no reactions to any warnings or such.

Figuring the alerts and alarms and more on my cell phone were active, and none of them were making any noise, I continued on.

I was less than fifteen miles from the border that separates Georgia and Florida when the radio broadcast was interrupted by an emergency alert. It was a warning to take shelter, with a strong storm approaching that was expected to bring damaging wind gusts and the possibility of significant hail. As part of delivering the news about these storms moving on the southern Georgia border at 45-miles-per-hour came, again, a listing of counties.

My first reaction was similar to the one I had previously. No one seemed to be adjusting or responding to the warning around me. Mist was in the air, requiring occasionally flipping on the wipers, but no steady rain. Wind didn’t seem too bad at all. And—while I have no clue if any of the counties listed were in Florida and the report supposedly came from a Jacksonville weather office—the report had said moving along southern Georgia and there was barely ten minutes to go before I wouldn’t be in Georgia. I’d be in Florida.

My second reaction was a word problem forming in my head. Kind of an eighth or ninth grade math thing, with me driving south at 70-miles-per-hour on route 95 and the storms moving east at 45-miles-per-hour along the border. If I was twelve miles from the border, how long would it take for… well… I quickly realized the difficulties facing me. The county names and current locations of the storms and wind gusts were unknowns, creating variables that I needed to know if a solution was to be found.

Where the heck was I?

In the end, I did drive during some brutal outbursts in and around Jacksonville soon after hearing the second round of alerts. There were lots of signs of damage, mostly trees and wind-blown debris along the road. But I was careful, took my time, and arrived safely at my destination.

The two dogs? They slept. They missed all of it.

What I couldn’t shake, and still can’t quite get a full grasp of, was the strange sense of place that I felt when I realized I both knew and didn’t know where I was.

I’ve got several navigation apps and a Garmin, providing lots of GPS options. Most of them update travel conditions in real time. They can tell me where cars are on the side of the road and give a warning when police may be found up ahead. I have a cell phone with bells and whistles and emergency alerts, which were triggered during the national emergency system test thing a few weeks ago.

I wasn’t operating a vehicle along a route where roads were closed and multiple hurricanes were converging. Sure seemed as if there was no reason to say I had several days’ worth of notice of what was approaching, even if I did know rain was expected.

And yet, none of that current and up-to-date technology was setting off notices instructing anyone in the area where I was to hunker down. Which was part of the problem, wasn’t it? Because I didn’t know where I was.

There’s an old saying, used in lots of circumstances, that provides for the concept that you don’t know what you don’t know until you know you don’t know it. Why is it that, often, those sudden realizations provide me with head-scratching moments of confusion?

When I’m planning a road trip I consider rush hour conditions. I think about eating and fuel and rest stops. I talk to the folks that might be in the car with me about beverages and snacks. Never have I wondered about mapping out a list of counties for my travels. But I guess that’s because I’ve never really wondered where I was.

Swirling around in my head, however, is the realization that all of it matters and none of it matters. Knowing the Georgia counties won’t help. If I study them and stick to the same driving route in Georgia, I still won’t know the counties in North Carolina. Learning them in Virginia is of no use if I decide to adjust the route in Pennsylvania or South Carolina and go a different way.

Where am I? I’m probably better off not knowing.

 

If you have any comments or questions, please e-mail me at Bob@inmybackpack.com