Mastering the U-Turn

Several years ago four of us guys climbed in a SUV for an evening road trip to St. Louis for a Cardinals baseball game. The plan was to park the SUV near a pub that I had visited before with a friend named Allison and ride the trolley to the park, and while the trip to St. Louis was uneventful, locating the pub was a bit of a problem.

After searching for some time, and losing our way in a myriad of downtown oneway streets, I called Allison and put her on speaker phone hoping she might help, but to no avail.

Finally she says, " Why don't you guys just stop and ask someone?"

There was a momentary silence, then a burst of laughter erupted and gufaws from the four of us in the SUV.

"What's so funny?" Allison asks.

"There's four guys in a SUV, and you think we are gonna stop and ask for directions?" I ask incredulously at the mere suggestion.

Again, another roar of laughter.

Since then, it still never occurs to me to ask for directions; but I do make a point of either mapping out my trip and use a GPS, yet I have still found the use of the U-turn a great tool. In fact, I cannot over-rate the usefullness of the U-turn; a skill frequent travelers must master in order to navigate through life's turns and missed directions.

Rules to mastering the U-turn.

Of course the first thing to consider making the U-turn is recognizing that you are indeed going the wrong direction. Here is an important note; making U-turns before your certain you are going the wrong direction will only confuse the situation more. Therefore, be certain that the direction you a have taken is truly moving you further away from your goal.

Before engaging in the U-turn keep safety in mind. Be on the lookout in all directions before initiating your manuaver; is there sufficient room for turn, be sure there is no one coming the other direction to avoid head on collision. In other words, make sure you aren't going to hurt anyone when you change course.

Make your U-turn quickly. Nothing worse than doing a U-turn in slow motion for everyone to gawk at and be the laughing stock on the road. No need for long apologies, partial turns, or creation of a commotion, just remember avoid impeding the flow of traffic for others who do happen to know where they are going.

I must admit having not always followed all of the above advice and on occasion made so many U-turns I could have been performing figure eights, though these days I try to make a clear and straight course.

Leaving San Diego

So here is a brief rundown of my last few weeks leaving one assignment for another. The plan was to move from San Diego to Sacramento but the timing was lousy as I had hoped for a little bit of time to allow getting set up and find a place to live. Instead, I finish working four nights in a row, sleep for a few hours on Wednesday morning, and take off for the 500 mile drive in order to get to Sacramento for an orientation that Saturday and start work Monday.

Bothersome emails kept arriving from the agency for such requirements as TB mask fitting verification. “Where am I supposed to find that?” I ask.
“Perhaps you can ask your current hospital for one”, I am told.

Now when am I supposed to include this in my schedule of work, sleep, and driving 500 miles I wonder, but decide it is worth the time stopping by the human resource office as I am driving out of town just in case. They had it! What luck was that?

After faxing a copy to the agency clerk, she then informs me that the chest x-ray I had taken three years ago is no longer valid and must be retaken prior to starting orientation, so if I could just swing by my local physician that would be great.

“Oh, yeah, my local physician is 1,000 miles away; I’ll just give him a ring” I scream at my email while embarking on the drive north. I call the clerk and using the most polite and professional voice I can muster explain my ordeal, and she agrees to email suggestions for clinics in Sacramento for when I arrive; which doesn’t happen until around 1:00 AM after an eleven hour drive. Mary has the room already taken care of as she flew up ahead of me.

The next day I locate a clinic which agrees to take the x-ray and we spend the next two days locating our new home, except I also have over 12 hours of online orientation to fit in while using the slowest internet connection since the old phone dialup I used over ten years ago, lesson I learned here is that hotel wi-fi does not mean high speed; the online orientation took more like 16 hours.

Locating proved to be more difficult in Sacramento than our previous experiences, but we ended up with a nice two bedroom, two bath apartment that was exactly within the price range we were looking for. Craigslist was again our best tool, but patience was needed this time round. During the interim we stayed at a location that offered small one bedroom cottages that could be rented by the week and offered significant savings over a hotel.

Ten days after the moving adventure began, things are back to normal again, or as much as normal gets to be in our life, and we are ready to explore our new location.