"Well, you go South to the Notch, take a left where the house burned down fifty years ago, then a slight right at the cow."

There was an old comedy routine called "You Can't Get There From Here." Unfortunately, the responsible comedian passed away years ago, but time does move along.

"The cow... what cow?"

"The one we ate yesterday, my guess would be."

"Criminey! Does that mean we have walked into the wrogn direction for a whole day and half?"

"Don't get your fur in a waddle, friend; I happen to know a shortcut."

"Oh aye, I happen to know all there is to know about your shortcut. Aren't we still on your last shortcut to the coast?"

"Cor! Ain't not my fault they planted yon river there, too deep to cross!"

"Crikey! You just happen to be watershy!"

"So sue me!"

*clicks link* this reminds me of an incident many years ago. I was walking through our village, when a driver asked me how to get to the Fernsehturm (television broadcast tower of Stuttgart, built in 1957 on a spot high above the kettle where the city resides). as it happens, from that certain spot you can see the upper half of it above the trees, on the northbound horizon. direct line would be like, 12km? thing is, there was no direct road from my spot, though the extra isn't very long. so I tried to tell the driver to turn right and at the next crossing---
"That's stupid!" he yelled at me right away. "That's the entirely wrong direction!" and then continued to drive towards the tower into the village's center.. I guess he must have taken 30min extra driving because he wouldn't listen.
mind you, that was long before the ascence of any electronic navigation system.

I occasionally get lost drivers in my street. I live on a dead end dirt road, on a hill top in the middle of nowhere. I get angry drivers in front of the house, blowing their horn because the road is impassible -- as in, gone -- beyond my neighbor's house.

I always ask them, "Are using a Tomtom GPS, or a Magellan?"

"What difference does that make?"

"They both use the same out-of-date, 70-year-old, 1947 Rand-McNally Road Atlas that shows this connecting to Stagecoach Drive."

"So how am I supposed to get to Coldchisel?"

"Turn around at the cul-de-sac, go back up the street and take a left."

"Why can't I go through here?"

Long blink. "Look at it. There's no here, here."

---

The worst ones are the truck drivers. One day, I went out to get the mail, and there was a huge tractor-trailer rig parked in front of the house. The driver was glaring at the enormous boulders set across the road, where it petered out into the woods. "Who blocked the <obscenity>" road?

"My neighbor did."

"Where the <blasphemy> is he?"

"Dead these last five or six years."

"Why did he block it off?"

I gave a sigh, I'd been over this ground before. "Listen carefully. I've lived here more than 40 years. The last car to drive over that part of the road was a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle. I know, because I drove it. A month or two later, there was a terrible storm that washed out that part of the road and dropped several large trees over it."

The driver gives me a dumb look. "Why didn't someone straighten it out?"

"Why bother? Too much effort. Nobody lives down there. No reason to go down there."

Exasperation. "Then how the <obscenity> do you get to Coldchisel?

"Go to the other end of the road, turn southwest."

Now, my street is narrow enough that I can barely park my car across it, and I drive a compact It's a quarter-mile (400 meters) long. This moron was driving a full-size tractor with a sleeper cab, and a 45-foot (14 meter) trailer. The whole rig was easily 60 feet long. No way was he going to turn it around and retreat; he had to back it up the way he came.

Y'don't come back now, y'hear?

here in central europe googlemaps has mapped everything out. unfortunately they also managed to drive along private agricultural streets (as in, not open to public traffic because those streets are indeed, private property), forest roads you'd be careful to thread upon with an Unimog, and narrow streets that are clearly and obviously too narrow for anything above 2.8tons delivery vans. why is that a problem? shipping companies don't want to spring the extra coin for navigation maps for their trucks that are specifically for heavy trucks (which would grey out such narrow paths as being unpassable, and also add info on low bridges and such), and send their poor overworked drivers on the road with standard maps in their navigators. and once they have to look for a shortcut or want to avoid a traffic jam, they might end up where no crane and no wrecker would reach them. there are fail videos of such situations, but aside the drivers failing to read the road signs and instead trusting their navi I can't blame them much.

besides, here the drivers are as underpaid as in the US.

well, it remains to wait for Totoro. he will tell you exactly) oh yes, I hope they have umbrellas)

better than having to wait for Godot. because Godot will never show up...