Finding my way in Western PA

My earliest adventures in Western Pennsylvania involve driving. For those not familiar with Pittsburgh and neighboring towns, the circuitous routes followed by the roads up around and through hills let you drive yourself to distraction.

I can remember on an early trip starting off from Squirrel Hill to a dance practice in Oakland. This would be easy: I'm heading East, so turn right and head NW to Oakland. As I got nearer the road ended so I moved a little to the right to correct my bearings, and next found the road stopped by a large wall created by a railroad bridge. Fortunately I soon recognized the wall as being near a folk dance club used for dances, and realized I'd gone SE instead of NW, and that in fact I'd been traveling exactly opposite to the direction I thought I was going.

This has happened a couple of other times. Just this past Saturday I drove out after hearing the lecture by Frances Moore Lappe at Duquesne, and confidently turned right to get to downtown and thence to 276 Westward. After a while it seemed like I was not going downtown, but instead over a bridge. Was I to wander the Southside again, searching for a bridge to north side? No, I soon recognized parts of Oakland. It seems I was going East rather than West. I thought the confusion started Duquesne's campus map puts North at the bottom of the map. But it doesn't. I'd entered the campus at the North end of the map, gone South to the lecture hall and then exited north. I'd made the mental reversal somehow in my head.

I have gotten lost enough so that I'm beginning to think a GPS might be valuable. I did go so far as to put an old compass in the car, but now that I'm actually using one I don't see how you distinguish North from South using only a compass: all it seems to do is let you tell North and South from East and West, since you can rotate it so the N and S align either way with the needle.

I decided to read about it just to be sure, and found I was wrong by looking at the neat and "Illustrated Guide to How to Use a Compass" by Kjetil Kjernsmo. Here I learned that the red end of the needle points to the magnetic North, which will make the compass even more useful, though from the other parts of his orienteering instruction it looks like I'll have to add use of the compass together with map reading to complete his course. Perhaps that would keep me from misreading maps.

My one experience following a GPS while driving a friend's car wasn't too encouraging. It produced a nice map and good instructions. The only defect was that it couldn't tell if you'd missed a turn, were getting off for gas, or were making a deliberate change in your route. All I would hear was a sudden "recalibrating", which was a sign you were no longer on the original route. Sometimes the recalibration was so swift it would have a total new route planned before you could tell it you'd just missed the turn.