Lost in North Carolina

Charlotte's nickname is the Queen City. I like to think that's why the main skyscraper downtown has a pretty little tiara on top. The bankers who work there might disagree.

The name comes from Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg. I'm not certain who she was, but if I had to guess, I'd say she was the queen of chaos. Road chaos, to be precise.



Charlotte's roads are ridiculous.

Take, for example, Sharon Road. There seem to be countless variations of Sharon Road/Lane/Ave/Circle and so on, in Charlotte. And brilliantly, they all seem to be in the same part of town. A drive down Sharon Road will bring you to several intersections of Sharon and Sharon. Confusion aside, doesn't it seem like they could have come up with a few other names? I live on Poindexter, after all. So they clearly weren't lacking for creativity in the street name department. Perhaps Sharon was Queen Charlotte's sister.

The other silly thing is a little phenomenon the locals call a dog leg. You'll be zipping down a road that appears to go straight on for as far as you can see. The directions to your destination say to "Stay on Park Road." Piece of cake! Then suddenly you look up and notice that you're not on Park anymore - though you haven't made any turns to the left or right. Hmmm. Maybe the name of the road changed? That's pretty common. El Camino Real in California is the only street I've ever known to keep its name the distance. But in Charlotte, the rules of logical road navigation do not apply. Because while you were rolling along the straight route you thought was Park Road, the actual Park Road took a sharp right and left you behind. On the map, the road looks like a dog leg, jutting off in a perpendicular direction, hence the name. And there's no rhyme to it, other than the predictability of my complete disorientation. I'm lost all of the time. I map things in advance. I take printouts. I get extra directions from trusted friends. But even when I do successfully locate the road I'm looking for, I have to hold my breath and stay on guard.

I know it's asking a lot for roads to go in nice straight gridlines as they do in Utah. But is it asking too much to have the road names stay consistent with the direction of the road?

Locals shake their heads and tell me it'll take a few years before I get used to Charlotte's roads. I've already worn out my best map of the city, folding and refolding it, day and night, moving and at stoplights. I'm inches from biting the bullet and buying a GPS. And I blame Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg. She'll always be Crazy Queen Charlotte to me. And this new home town of mine, is the Crazy Queen City.