Mental Cartography

When I first moved to Seattle to start attending UW (14+ years ago, which is ridiculous, because I only lived in Eastern Washington for 12 years, and there’s simply no way I’ve lived here longer than I lived over there), I had only the most rudimentary understanding of the layout of the Puget Sound metro area, which was pretty much based around the I-90 corridor.  Okay, rudimentary is probably an understatement.  Tenuous?  Basic?  None of those really convey the sense of “really have no idea what is where” that I’m striving for here, but my vocabulary is failing me.

Anyways, I think it’s understandable, since I grew up in Eastern Washington, and really only came over here for Christmas, Mariners games and the occasional band trip.  Plus, I was never driving myself, and while I don’t have a problem learning how to get places from riding (although I understand this is a thing, poor unfortunate souls), this was infrequent enough that it never really sank in.  Plus, those were pretty short and focused trips, without a lot of exploring.  Makes it hard to learn an area, y’know?

I knew where the Kingdome (and later Safeco) was (because it’s right off the end of I-90), and that Snohomish and Arlington were north of Seattle (family), and I knew a few spot locations in Seattle (again, family), but not really how to get there, and that was really about it.  As I said, I’m lacking in words for just how pathetically sketchy my knowledge was.

Note that UW is not near any of these places.

Obviously, it started getting better once I moved here, although it took a while.  Driving up to 85^th seemed like going to a different town, let along going all the way across to Ballard.  In fairness, about the only time you get on the freeway in the Tri-Cities is when you actually ARE going to a different town.  Pasco’s the only one where you can really get to significantly different portions of town on a freeway with any sort of efficiency.  And I didn’t really spend much time in Pasco.

Northgate was even farther (especially when you make the mistake of taking the 75 instead of something like the 66 or 67…).  Since I didn’t have a car, I mostly learned bus routes, and a whole bunch of spot locations from band parties and the like, but I didn’t really have a sense of how they all fit together (and not because of any imbibing at the parties, I promise, Mom and Dad).  I’d have experiences where I’d take a new bus route that happened to go by several places that I knew, right in a row, and I’d had no idea that they were all so close together.

Even today, though, and despite my good sense of direction, I still have some gaping holes in my mental cartography of the Seattle metro area.  Actually, that’s not entirely the right way to put it.  Really, it’s that I have some severe misconceptions in my mental structure of the area, which remain despite multiple refutations.  This area is very different in my head than it is in the real world.

For example, in my head, Seattle ends at I-90 and the stadiums.  Sodo?  Columbia City?  Rainier Valley?  Heck, even West Seattle?  Not actually part of Seattle in my head.  What do they belong to?  Not really sure, but it’s not Seattle, I’m sure about that.  I just never (or really, really rarely) go down there (except on the freeway!), so in my head, they don’t count.

That’s not always true, though.  Capitol Hill and Magnolia, say, are both definitely part of Seattle to me, and I’ve rarely been to either of them, either.  What’s the difference?  Arbitrary geographic locations, apparently.  I’m not even sure where the southern line of Seattle is.  Somewhere around Boeing Field?

I’ve got most of North Seattle down, except that everything east of 35^th NE still confuses the heck out of me, because a lot of the street grid structure breaks down.  I will go miles out of my way all the way out to near Magnuson Park just to avoid the streets in the interior of that area.  I’m pretty sure cardinal directions break down in there.  Daedalus would have nightmares about it.  (My hobby: using more obscure portions of famous mythological stories.)  Maybe there’s a minotaur?

In my head, Bellevue is basically an area bounded by 4^th, 8^th, I-405, and Bellevue Way (plus the stuff on the west side of Bellevue Way, because Bell Square is definitely part of Bellevue).  Outside of that, Eastgate counts mostly because it’s on that I-90 corridor I mentioned earlier (although everything south of I-90, like Factoria, isn’t included).  Once you get off of Eastgate, though, or outside of that downtown core, it’s not Bellevue, it’s just, I don’t know, unincorporated forestland?  Oh, and exiting onto Bellevue Way from I-90 and 520 immediately takes you to the downtown core (which is therefore apparently simultaneously both four blocks and five miles wide).  (Sorry for butchering your town, friends from Bellevue.)

This is a perfect example of how these misconceptions persist despite the fact that I objectively know much, much better.  I’ve been to Bellevue High several times.  Taking my vanpool in for maintenance goes through Factoria.  I’ve run several errands up to the Crossroads area.  Every day, I leave work, drive down Eastgate, and then cut off on other roads through to SE 8^th.  I know that these places are all part of Bellevue, but I still don’t actually believe it.

It’s not just the Seattle area, though.  No matter how many times I look at a map, I remain unconvinced that Seattle and Spokane are at basically the same latitude, and that Wenatchee is south of them both.  That’s just not possible.  And Spokane really just consists of about a mile along the river from the dam to Gonzaga, right?

Even where I grew up, I still have trouble with certain geographic relationships.  I always know, intellectually, that my high school, Southridge, is further west than I always think it is.  There’s just a big hill between it and most of the rest of town that keeps you from being able to visually place it.  But I didn’t realize until just now, looking at a map, that it’s actually further west than Kamiakin!  (Not by a lot, but it’s true!)  That just cannot possibly be.  It’s just not physically possible.

I’m sure by now you’re expecting me to pivot to something meaningful about how facts can have a hard time overcoming preconceptions, but I’m going to mix things up and just leave this here on a light note.

And a question: What funny mental geography quirks do you have?

Why I'm Rooting for Oregon Tonight

As a Husky, this is a very difficult thing for me to do, and I recognize that it will be hard for some of my fellow Husky fans to stomach.  However, I have the following reasons, which I feel are good and sufficient:

1) It’s basically Pascal’s Wager for college football.  Yes, Pascal’s Wager requires you to pick a side, which I’m not obligated to do here, but half the fun of sports is rooting for teams in games you have no stake in, so… close enough.

 2)  Pac-12 pride: If Oregon loses, the Pac-12 reputation takes a hit.  It’ll appear, once again, as though the rest of the Pac-12 can’t beat a team that can’t hang with the best.  Less of a risk with the demolition of the BCS, granted, since Oregon has already won a playoff game, and certainly less than the (ever-so-well-deserved) SEC reputation hit this year, but still something.  After all of the mockery of the Increasingly-Inaccurately-Named-Conference over the last few years for being a fairly weak conference, losing to them now wouldn’t look good. 

3) Impeccable politeness: Imagine, as a Husky fan, being confronted with a stereotypical Duck fan (should be easy enough) upon their victory this evening.  This Duck fan would of course be boisterously, even obnoxiously effusive in his glee (albeit deservedly), and would likely attempt to rub in your face their national championship (no matter how polite I’m being here, I refuse to use their appalling abbreviation for this title).  How might this Duck fan react to a polite and positive response congratulating them on their achievement?

a.       They realize that it’s difficult (both tactically and morally) to mock someone who refuses to become upset at the mocking, but instead agrees with them as to the substance of their statements, and they thereby tone down their own behavior.  As a Husky fan, you can feel a certain pride at helping Oregon fans become better people, one fan at a time.  You can also enjoy your moral superiority for graciously taking the high road.

b.      They continue the behavior that has earned them nigh-universal recognition as gauche.  As a Husky fan, you can not only take even more enjoyment in your moral superiority as described above, but also delight in this confirmation of the true nature of (most) Oregon fans.

Now, granted, you could do this even while rooting for tOSU, but I think it would probably be easier if you rooted for Oregon to begin with.

4) Friends:  The few Oregon fans I’m friends with (left over from high school) are actually very decent people (and reasonable fans), and I feel somewhat bad rooting against them when I have no other reason to root for tOSU.

In other words, my reasons are pretty much all cynical and self-serving, except for the last one.  But how else would I manage to root for Oregon?

I recognize that this may not work for everyone, and I don’t blame them for that whatsoever.  These are not the best of reasons; they are not the worst of reasons.  There’s a lot of bad blood (and flung dog feces) out there to overcome.  I don’t claim that this will be easy for me, and Pascal didn’t even expect his infinitely larger stakes to convince everyone (of course, he was also as Calvinist as a Catholic can be, apparently, so there are some free will issues there.  Similes only go so far).  I just thought I should explain before I started getting incredulous hate mail from my fellow Huskies.

#GoDu… okay, I can’t go THAT far.

Scathing Critiques of Beloved Children's Books: The Railway Series

Most of you are probably more familiar with the name of the associated TV series, Thomas the Tank Engine (or Thomas and Friends, or whatever.  I haven't seen it, but I gather they've changed the name several times).  However, that show was originally based on The Railway Series by Rev. W. Awdry.

The series itself is about a bunch of trains on the fictional island of Sodor, which is wedged in between England and the Isle of Man.  The trains run about carrying passengers, goods, etc.  Given that they're trains, and doing real work, you'd think that this would be something good for kids to read.

You'd think.

The vast majority of the trains, Thomas included, are actually kind of jerks.  They constantly call each other names, make fun of each other (and are sometimes downright cruel), disobey instructions, whine about doing their assigned work, and then do it poorly, get inflated opinions of themselves, don't think through their actions beforehand, and get into (generally self-inflicted) trouble.  In other words, they're all basically small children, with the obnoxiousness of Harry Potter in Order of the Phoenix.

(I haven't watched any of the episodes of the TV series, but Emily has, and she tells me that they're even worse in the show, especially the newer episodes.)

While the coaches (passenger cars) are generally well-behaved unless mistreated, the trucks (boxcars, hopper cars, etc.) are constantly being deliberately difficult, playing tricks on the engines and actually trying to hurt them at times.

The passengers aren't any better: they're rude, entitled whingers who are constantly complaining to anyone who will listen the first time anything goes wrong that it's a Bad Railway.  Even Kieran has felt the need to stick up for the Railway against the passengers on occasion while reading these books.

Thomas is one of the worst, which is unfortunate, given that he seems to be the most popular, and that he's the namesake of the series.  He's smug, stuck-up, and self-important.  He treats most of the other engines fairly poorly, and doesn't follow directions, including instructions not to go certain places.  But in a move George Lucas surely would have been proud of, the publisher insisted that the series focus more on Thomas, despite that clearly not being the original intent (he's not even in the first book).  Because he was small and cute, or something like that.  As if that means anything.

You know who the series should be named after?

Edward.

Because Edward is a freaking saint.

Edward is well-behaved.  He's unfailingly polite to all of the other engines and the passengers.  He's always happy to do his assigned work to the best of his ability, and is willing to take on extra work if needed by the railway.  He's not the biggest engine, which means he gets dismissed by many as not as useful, but he tries hard, doesn't complain, and in general is everything that we should want our kids to emulate.

And Edward is actually the main character of the first book, which tells me that until the publisher stepped in, he might very well have been the focus of the series.  Instead, he gets sent off to some other station somewhere along the line, to be reduced mostly to cameos in other trains' stories (although he does eventually get a book to himself), while Thomas gets his very own branch line to run, and many other stories of his own.

True to the real world, I suppose, but not really the message I want my kids getting.

The other particularly good role model in these books, to me, is Sir Topham Hatt (the Fat Controller).  This is a man who understands what it is to run a business well (which is also remarkably like being a parent at times, given how child-like the trains can be).  He's strict with the trains, expects them to do their best, and will follow through on punishments if necessary, but he also has a sense of humor, and is willing to give second chances once he feels that lessons have been learned. 

He's also willing to do what it takes to give his engines a chance to succeed, and isn't stingy about bringing in replacement engines if someone breaks down, so that the other engines aren't stuck trying to do their own work plus some, while not simply firing the engines while they're broken.  And when the passengers complain, as they inevitably do, he pretty much ignores them because he knows that stuff happens sometimes, and that it wouldn't be productive to punish the engines just to mollify the passengers.

So there's that.  And the books are quite entertaining, which does go a long ways.  But seriously, sometimes you just want to reach into the book and Gibbs-smacking the trains until they start behaving.