Health & Fitness
Lost On The Loop
Typically an expert navigator, Jami Howard is Lost on The Loop. Will she ever learn her way around Athens as well as she knew her way around Atlanta?
It's not that I'm unfamiliar with how perimeter highways work, I promise. I grew up in Atlanta and have put thousands of miles on I-285. I know the streets of Atlanta so well that I'm the go-to person for friends who are lost or turned around in the city.
"Oh, you're where? You're looking at that one brick building with the painted mural on the side? Go up two blocks and make a left and then West Peachtree will be ahead and you can turn left there and it'll dump you out on I-85."
My brain just handles directions really, really well. And, maybe (probably) I've inflated my ego in the navigation chambers of my brain. But truth be told, I've never been lost in Atlanta. Perhaps I've not been able to find a particular street for a moment, but I know WHERE I am and I can find my way out of any dead-end, dark-alley anywhere.
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You can imagine my frustration with The Loop. It's not like it's complicated! Inner. Outer. On-ramps. Off-ramps. La-de-dah.
But I somehow get it mixed up in my head when I get on the road. Maybe it's that my AC is still broken in my car and paired with the summer heat, I'm delusional. Maybe it's one of the first signs of old age, seeing as how the big three-oh is looming in the fall.
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I don't know what it is... But I know this:
- From 316, I can get on the loop by turning right onto it and eventually end up in Five Points at my sister's house.
- From 316, I can take that gnarly right-u-turn-crazy-on-ramp and take the loop to the left and get to my boyfriend's restaurant and my friend Catherine's house.
Outside of that, I'm totally scared to take the loop.
Maybe it's because, even though I know it's a perimeter highway and will only bring me back to where I started, it looks like a country road, speckled with little exits devoid of the billboards and roadside advertising that I'm so used to seeing.
Maybe it's because that one time, after my first date with the boyfriend, I took a wrong turn somehow and rode the loop for what seemed like an eternity after we parted ways. It must've taken me three hours to get home that night.
My navigation ego is bruised, but not broken. My goal for the next couple of weeks, as a new Athenian: take the loop for a spin, on and off the exits, explore a little bit. Any suggestions on where I should make my pitstops?
