I dashed out to pick up some Mickey D's for breakfast this morning, but I had a narrow window of time, since K didn't really get up until just after 9:30, and they only serve breakfast until 10:00. Bizarro Town was home to one of the original McDonalds's; that is, one of the original locations after Ray Kroc bought it and began expanding the business. This was before Happy Meals or Big Macs, before there was any advertising at all, really. When I moved to town in 1961, you couldn't go inside to order, and certainly not to eat. You walked up to a window, like at an old ice cream stand, and ordered. Your choices were hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, coke, orange, or root beer. Literally, you ordered a meal and got change back from your dollar. The big sign outside said "Over 400,000 sold." It was close enough to where I lived that my friends and I could ride there on our bikes (or walk, really), buy food and sit on the built-in benches outside to eat. (We got to do that maybe once a year.) If Shirl took us for a quick dinner (also once a year), we ate in the car.
They tore down the old one many years ago, and built a shiny new one right next to where it had stood, making a lot more parking lot, because now, of course, people would be parking and eating inside. But Bizarro Town was not zoned for drive-in windows, not for anything but banks, so we didn't have one of those. It made for not a quick trip; we were more likely to drive to a nearby town for the convenience of a drive-in window. More than once a year, I might add.
But the zoning has changed, and now we have this quirky little weird drive-through lane, which I figured was the only way I was going to get there in time. Which raised the next question: what's the best way to get from my house to McDonald's?
I would love to tell you the actual straight-line distance, but I haven't found a map program that will tell me that. I imagine it's a mile, perhaps a bit more. Or less. The whole of Bizarro Town is about two miles across in any direction, okay, maybe two and a half. The problems is that:
- There are two highways that slice across the town at odd angles and that can only be crossed in certain inconvenient places. Imagine a slightly open scissors. My house is on the upper edge of the upper blade. McD's is on the lower edge of the lower blade.
- The only way to get there is to go around, at either end.
- Highway modifications made in the last few years have put my little corner of town into a pocket with only one way out in one of those directions. I can merge onto the highway into the left-most lane, but cannot get over to the right fast enough to make the u-turn and swing around so that I can come out exactly where McDonald's is.
- There used to be a back entrance to McDonald's, which would have cut all of this crap out of the equation, but neighbors complained of traffic on the street, so they closed it.
- The highways are full of jug-handles, traffic lights, and one-way side-streets, which complicate matters even more.
Of course, I just went there, using a back-street entry to one of the highways that I only know about because it's in the neighborhood I grew up in. I know this is the shortest and easiest way to get there. But when I got home, my curiousity got me, and I looked at the various mapping sites to see what they would suggest.
You know, mapping sites are crap. When you use one to check on something you already know, you can really see how they can screw you over when you're going someplace you don't know. I checked all the major sites.
Two of them refused to accept my house address or the McDonald's address. All of the property numbers in Bizarro Town are hyphenated -- I grew up at 2-29, for example -- and these sites converted the numbers I typed in into what it assumed were correct, including the elimination of any zeroes. But not. So those were useless.
All the others gave me a short route: 1.7 miles, four minutes. They neglected to mention that there are five traffic lights along this route, and when you get to the end, yes, McDonald's is indeed on the left, but there is no left turn at that light. You have to make a right turn the block before and swing around the back of the Jiffy Lube in order to come out where you can drive straight across into the McD's parking lot. (And this, folks, is what in New Jersey is lovingly called "a jug-handle.")
What I wanted to do was compare the different routes I already knew about. Should I go the way they suggested (but make the turn the right way?) Would it be better to go in the opposite direction and hope that on a Saturday morning, traffic would be light enough for me to move over three lanes in 200 yards? Should I take the yet longer way, go through two other towns so I could make the u-turn safely? Would they still be serving breakfast when I got there? Was there any mapping program at all that would figure out that my route was actually the best one?
It's just an intellectual (well, it is) puzzle, because of course, I've already digested my food. Anybody know of a map site that lets you try out, or specify, different routes? Just wondering.
