During the summer, not all that long after I got my license, I decided to drive myself and one of my friends to Shady Oak Beach in Hopkins. I did not have my own car yet, so I resorted to using my dad's Expedition, which always makes me feel like I'm driving a tank. I was already nervous, and my lack of directional skills did not make things any easier. I knew that I needed to take Highway 494 to Highway 7, and from there go to Shady Oak Road and follow that up to the beach. What I did not know, however, was which way to turn onto Highway 7. You see where I am going with this.
While driving, I saw the turn for Highway 7. I did not think about which way I was going, or which way the beach was, and I ended up making a wrong turn. I had never driven to that beach, and the last time I was even there was a few years ago, so how was I supposed to know which way to turn?
I knew that the turn off for Shady Oak road was soon, or at least it would have been if I was going the right way, so after a couple minutes on the road I started getting a nagging suspicion that something was wrong. As I saw it, there were three possibilities: One, I had made a wrong turn and was driving away from where I was trying to go. Two, the road and beach had disappeared from the face of the earth completely, or Three, I had not gotten there yet. I figured the first was the most likely, but I decided to keep going just in case it was farther than I thought it was. Besides, I had only had my license for two months by that time and driving on my own was still a novelty to me. As we went down the open road, we started seeing less buildings, malls, and other evidence of an urban setting and started seeing more farmland.
I was getting pretty sure that I was going the wrong way, but I wasn't ready to admit my error. Once we reached a sign for Victoria, I knew I had no choice besides pulling off the road into a driveway and breaking down and calling for directions.
As it turned out, I went west onto Highway 7 when I should have gone east. If I had gone east, I would have only had to go a mile before reaching Shady Oak road. Going west, I ended up 15 miles away in the wrong direction. While I was driving the wrong direction, besides making a memory that I would eventually write about in a blog, I also learned a lesson about driving: "Always make sure that you know where you are going and how to get there." Now, whenever I am going somewhere new, I make sure I have turn by turn directions there and back.
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That is a great lesson to be learned the hard way. I think everyone has made that mistake before, including me. I didn't see any grammatical errors looking through your blog, which I congratulate you on. I really like your format for your profile page too. You did a great job on your blog.
ReplyDeleteI like your post, I also made one of these mistakes before, but I was driving at night. I like how you list three different possibilities that you relize after you made the wrong turn. I also like how you interact with people who reads your blog, this makes them want to keep reading on and on. I felt like you did great on explaining why you were confuse.
ReplyDeleteNordy first of all you did a nice job focusing on one main topic instead of jumping from point to point. You stayed consistent and you didn’t have too many details in your description. The book end could have been worked on I don’t see the thread pulling the information through and making a connection from beginning to end. I like the word choice and the “other evidence of an urban” it made it seem like an investigation or deductive reasoning (As we went down the open road, we started seeing less buildings, malls, and other evidence of an urban setting and started seeing more farmland.). This gave a pretty good description of what’s going on it was very easy to follow. When you said “breaking down” did you really break down or were you just describing the situation? In all the narrative was very well organized just work on the book ends and make more grammar checks. Haha, I feel like such a hypocrite saying this because tones of errors in my writing as well.
ReplyDeleteEric, I liked that you got right to your point and how in depth you went. I also liked the flow of your paper and your syntax was very nice. This paper is so relatable since roads are ridiculous but overall you did a nice job, you had a few grammatical errors but a quick revision should wrap things up.
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