Getting lost (and found) in all the right places

For a guy whose part-time job is delivering stuff, I sure get lost a lot in strange places.

I know Oshawa like the back of my hand and I get around Toronto - which I haven't lived in for more than 20 years - with the greatest of ease. Put me in unfamiliar territory, and all bets are off.

Just ask my son Jake.

I got lost often on Florida's highways on our trip last spring and even took a few wrong turns walking, as my experience (culverts, quicksands and six-packs oh my) in an Orlando ditch will attest. But I think our mini-vacation in upstate New York (we got back today) takes the cake.

We crossed the border okay but once past Lewiston I got lost trying to get to the south shore of Lake Ontario on our way to Rochester. Several times, in fact, before we ended up in the middle of nowhere at a bar called Somewhere to ask for directions.

(Yes, I am a man and I have no problem asking for directions. The truth is I have a lot of experience at it.)

So we got directions from the bartender, while I enjoyed a Southern Tier IPA - bars in the middle of nowhere in the USA (at least the ones called Somewhere) have IPAs on tap, and they cost one dollar for a half-pint - and Jake was regaled with hockey stories from Tony, his new pal and the proud uncle of a lad soon to be drafted in the first round of the NHL. That's what he said, anyway.

So away we went from Somewhere with our directions, only to get lost at least twice more before finding the right road to Rochester. (We also got perilously close to running out of gas on the way but we don't really need to talk about that.)

Somewhere bar in Youngstown, N.Y.

Once settled in Rochester (I found the motel with no difficulty, I am proud to say) I told Jacob that I was going on a beer run to the Beers of the World outlet (the subject of a future blog), located south-east of us. Looked pretty straightforward on the map and I told the J Man I would be back in a half-hour or so.

It was a little farther than I expected, but I was there in about 20 minutes. Easy peasy.

It was on the way back that I ran into more troubles.

You have to understand that Rochester is littered with highways. There's the I-90, the 390, the 490, the 590, the Inner Loop, the Outer Loop plus some expressways and thruways that appear on maps but don't seem to actually exist.

I'd say Rochesterites can probably get around their city pretty quick with all those options. For visitors - especially visitors with a habit of getting lost - it's a recipe for disaster.

Lanes appear and disappear without warning and even after getting off the highway to try the city streets I had troubles. The city is not exactly designed on a grid system and, coupled with my sense of direction which had gone to hell an hour before, panic was setting in.

I had been gone quite a while and I knew my son would be getting worried.

I finally found a sketchy motel - I mean really, REALLY sketchy - and asked the clerk for directions to Lyell Avenue and my hotel. "It's just up the road about a quarter-mile," said the lady from her barbed-wire adamantium cage, giving me that "are you on drugs?" look.

"Uh, okay. Thank you," I stammered, relief in my voice.

(Lyell Avenue, by the way, got an entry in Rochester's Wikipedia listing:

Once an Italian-American neighbourhood, there have recently been efforts to improve the quality of life here. It is known largely for its crime, especially instances of prostitution and drug sales.

(For someone who lives two minutes away from Oshawa's crackhead and hooker headquarters, I felt (almost) right at home. But I digress.)

Anyway, I made it back to the motel, mindful of 12 year-old Jake's safety during my long absence, only to hear him say he didn't know I had left. Kids.

I had no roaming services so I had taken steps before we left to ensure the trip from Rochester to Niagara Falls, where we finished our vacation, went off without a hitch -  I took the low road all the way across the State. Lyell Avenue, also known as Highway 31, took me straight to the Falls.

Niagara Falls - the American side

No problems. I was happy. Jake was ecstatic.

But my woes continued on our walking trip to the American Falls that day. You'd think finding Niagara-Bloody-Falls would be a simple task. I thought so too, having seen it from the other side a dozen times or so, but we ended up circling the downtown core for half an hour before finally discovering the way, which involved entering a State Park and then a government building before reaching the promised land.

The next day, after crossing the border with my 24 delicious IPAs and a few - okay, a dozen - extras that we weren't going to tell the friendly Customs Officials about, we stopped on the Canadian side of the Falls to take some pictures.

And before we left I decided to take some downtown shots and parked my car in the duty free parking lot to do so.

Yeah, you know where this is going.

Upon leaving I discovered I had no choice but to go back to the American side (paying another toll in the process) before turning around and re-entering Canada once more.

The first time through I had no troubles. This time I got asked a lot of questions about my trip. Did I have a hotel receipt to prove I was gone the requisite 48 hours? (No.)

Did I have a receipt for the beer I purchased? (Yes.) Fortunately for me it was for the beer I bought in Niagara Falls. The Rochester purchase alone would have put me way over my limit. Though in my defence, I did drink many of those beers before I came back to Canada.

In the end, after I told the young lady - who was absolutely gorgeous, I should point out - about my love of IPAs and she had a good laugh about the nearly $10 price of one of them ("That's a Triple IPA," I told her), she let me back into Canada.

And once on familiar soil we made it home with getting lost once.

I think the only one who was not surprised at that was Jake. But then he's always had more faith in me than I ever did.

Thank God somebody does.

Cheers!