Yet Another Meme. From the only place I ever seem to get these things.
1. Go To Mapquest.com.2. Click on Directions.
3. Enter your current address and the address of your childhood home (or at least the town if you don't remember the exact address).
4. Put the time and distance in a post like this.
5. Repost the instructions to the meme in your own blog.
Here's how long it will take to get to Howard Buffett's house*.
Total Est. Time: 5 hours, 45 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 377.76 miles
I would say that's about right. Particularly the driving time. Although you can get it down to about five hours if you don't stop too much and traffic is flowing nicely on I-35 and I-80.
I do have to say, however, that the directions that Mapquest produced for driving within Omaha are, perhaps, the worst example of how badly they've flubbed it that I've ever seen. They've screwed me up---along with many other people---in the past, but man, oh, man! This one takes the cake! In Omaha, you don't go to the north side of Dodge Street to get to the neighborhoods on the south side of Dodge Street, which is where the old homestead resides and how Mapquest routed me in. Why don't you do this? you ask. Because Dodge street is the only street in Omaha that has the capacity to go East/West where you can make decent time and provides access to all the major north/south sidestreets---anything other road is a crapshoot. As a result Dodge has the most traffic. They built the freeways goofily in town, expecting development to go north/south. Being contrary, of course, development went west, hence, there are no freeways where you need them. Dodge Street has five lanes and the traffic flows quite quickly. It would be like crossing 35W here in the Cities. You'd have to gun it to make it across, and even then it's dicey.
And as the husband loves to whine about whenever we're there, you can never, never, NEVER turn left in Omaha. Well, that's not exactly true. There are plenty of places where you can turn left. But, where he is correct in that statement is that you can never turn left off Dodge Street onto a side street unless there happens to be a turn lane, which the city planners didn't provide many of in what appears was an attempt to make things interesting. There is no turn lane onto our old block. Hence Mapquest's faulty directions to turn north to be able to go south. Oy. Just take Farnam---or any other freakin' street for that matter---and you wouldn't have this problem. Considering the old homestead is right next to Farnam Street, you think Mapquest would have picked that one up.
*The old homestead just sold again this past summer. To Howard Buffett, who is Warren's son. And yes, I mean the Warren Buffett. I used to walk past his house every day going back and forth to school. The husband asks for a moment of silence every time we pass it nowadays. Howard currently lives on a farm in Illinois most of the time, rejecting his father's capitalist ways. Amazingly enough, though, he still manages to live rather nicely on those lovely Berkshire-Hathaway "A" stock dividends. According to the Cake Eater Father, who still keeps up with the dish on our old block, he bought the place so his family---and various other relatives---wouldn't have to stay in a hotel when they visited dear old Dad, who lives five blocks away.
{Point of Origin: The Impenetrable One}
Posted by Kathy at January 11, 2005 01:06 PM