Years ago a German tourisy was stranded in San Jode California because she got on the wrong plane. It became a story because no one in San Jose speaks German and they had to call the German consul in San Francisco to clear it up.
I've often found Americans to be a bit "geographically challenged". I got chatting to a very pleasant American couple a few years ago while visiting the USA. They asked where I was from originally and I told them North Wales. They asked if that was near New South Wales.
When in England I discovered that no one had any idea where Philadelphia is (not sure they'd even heard of it). That's when I realized it's a form of vanity to think foreigners know much about your own country. But at least I was 20 when I figured this out (perhaps you have a similar excuse).
I always thought the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia with all the Welsh place names were about as "old money" as you can get in the US. Not many Welsh people seem to be aware of the history. I did read somewhere that at one time there was a fashion for townships to adopt Welsh sounding names because they were considered posher ! Anyway, it's unlikely that any Pennsylvania bound travellers will end up in Wales by mistake...
I have to admit that the names of those Philly suburbs (and colleges) *do* sound posher to me--whether by the euphonious sound of Welsh or association with Main Line class, I don't know. (I suppose "Goat Crossing" will sound better in any other tongue.)
I was in a bar in Aberdeen last year and they asked me where I was from. I replied West Virginia, but even explaining where it was did no good. They did not even know that Virginia was on the coast.
My brother in law teaches English at a vocational college in northern England - nothing postmodern, just basic grammar, spelling, comprehension, and business correspondence for aspiring electricians and plumbers. Thinking to stretch them a bit, he set them the opening passage of Bleak House ("fog everywhere") as a comprehension exercise. He annotated every word and phrase he thought might give them trouble: "Michaelmas Term", "Lord Chancellor", "megalosaurus" etc.
He forgot "Kentish". They: "What does Kentish mean?" He: "It refers to Kent." They: "What's Kent?" He: "You know, the county of Kent. As in Canterbury Cathedral. As in the white cliffs of Dover". They had never heard of Kent. I tried the experiment on the girl behind the bar of my local pub, a trainee beautician. She: "Kent? Where's that? It's near London isn't it? Is it a town?" The average people in Yorkshire have barely heard of Kent.
Since you comment on here, you are probably two standard deviations above average intelligence. The average people are halfway between you and a normal ten year old or an adult with Down's Syndrome.
I once had a baffling phone conversation with a rather irate man who wanted to know why his request hadn’t been handled. The reference number he gave me resembled no reference number I’d ever known my agency to use. I finally discovered he thought he was calling a Canadian government agency; somehow he’d gotten the phone number of a field office of its American equivalent.
> This story would be funnier if when she finally arrived in Portland, Oregon, she discovered that her meeting was actually in Portland, Maine.
I thought this was going to be the punchline.
---
In my neck of the woods Newark and New York sound similar but the former is in New Jersey and is home to one of the three major airports serving the greater-NYC area. In addition if one takes Amtrak, Newark Penn Station and New York Penn Station are consecutive stops, so I'm sure those coming from Philadelphia or DC for the first time have to watch themselves to make sure they don't get off in New Jersey.
On a smaller scale Livingston High School and Governor Livingston High School are located 7½ miles away from each other in the tony suburbs west of Newark. The former is the alma mater of Jason Alexander and Chris Christie, while the latter is one of the top-ranked high schools in New Jersey as it serves the children of Bell Labs where C was invented by Dennis Ritchie
There was a story in the news a couple of days ago about a couple of young American ladies who thought they had purchased plane tickets from Rome to Nice, but then found themselves in Tunisia.
The legacy media can still function when the topic isn't fraught. In NBC Nightly News' telling of the story, the hapless passengers re-booked their cancelled Rome --> Nice flight at the gate.
"Where are you going?"
"To Nice."
"Here are your new tickets." Rome --> Tunis "Safe travels."
There was an old episode of Full House (set in San Francisco) where one of the younger characters got on a plane thinking the destination was Oakland, California, but in actuality was Auckland, New Zealand
This was copied from an actual event. A guy was going to Oakland via LA on Air New Zealand. The plane went on toe Auckland. There was an announcement for "passengers to Auckland stay on the plane". He misheard it and ended up in New Zealand. Air New Zealand flew him back for free and milked the story as good PR.
There's a Melbourne in Florida with an airport. It wanted to call its airport Orlando Melbourne but the Orlando airport sued and they compromised on calling it Melbourne Orlando.
This may be an urban legend but I read the Portland, Maine airport has a dedicated service to assist people who wind up there when they intended to fly to Portland, Oregon.
Steve's graduate alma mater is struggling in football, both on the field and in the stands. They officially drew 31163 last night but by judging from pictures on twitter* it seemed a lot less.
I'm curious on Steve's thoughts on the Rose Bowl as a sports venue. For those not familiar it is located in Pasadena 18 miles northeast of the UCLA campus in Westwood. I understand that they can't play their games at Drake Stadium as it is currently configured but the current setup doesn't seem to be working; maybe they can play at the soccer stadium 18 miles southeast in Carson. Of course that would involve the indignity of playing on the campus of Cal State-Dominguez Hills
I can recall watching a news segment in the 1960s over whether UCLA should build their own football stadium or not, so it's been a long-running problem.
I'd say the huge new So-Fi stadium near LAX would be the closest at about 10 miles from campus.
I think UCLA would be swallowed up in SoFi until they improve. As it stands only two P4 teams play in NFL stadiums: Miami and Pitt. There are also three G5 teams that do so: UNLV, South Florida*, and Temple. Of these five schools only Temple is really an embarrassment to play in an NFL stadium; they haven't cracked 20000 for a conference game since its 2021 homecoming against Memphis, although it was even worse when they had to share Veterans Stadium with both the Eagles and Phillies
On car trips, my older brother was always reading a book, so he had little directional sense when he started driving in NoVa. He'd invariably turn in the wrong direction at the mouth of our cul de sac. Given directions to take Rt 1 off the Beltway, instead of the exit in downtown Alexandria a couple miles from home, he drove a quarter of the Beltway to the Rt 1 in College Park MD.
As a young teen out with friends I called my dad and asked him to pick us up on “NW North Street”
He had lived in the DC area since his teens, had an excellent sense of direction, and could not for the life of him recall such an address anywhere in the city.
He asked me to put a friend of mine on the phone. She said we could be found on NW N Street.
Not being stupid, I have never made a mistake like that. Or as I like to say, “There’s a Guayaquil in Ecuador, too!”
But in the spirit of the post, I will mention the time my helicopter instructor had me run through what’s called a confined-area operation, where the pilot is challenged to reconnoiter an off-airport site and figure out how to get down to and then out of it. We found a creek bed which looked suitable. Because it was tucked in some hills and hard to see unless you knew exactly where it was, we sought to input its location into the GPS’s memory. What you do is give it a 5-character name. What you don’t do is pick a name which matches any of the many waypoints used by instrument-rules traffic. Well, my instructor’s initial choice, CONFI, turned out to exist already...in Alaska! Did I mention we were in Texas? Fortunately the GPS instantly went into an Are-you-sure routine and we caught the error in time. Otherwise, though...yes: left to autopilot, which this helicopter had, the darn thing really would’ve tried to fly all the way. And land there too!
Now just riffing: I found pilot training very hard, but I was sustained by the idea that you could never, ever explain any of it to Michelle Obama. Well, AOC too, but I don’t know...Michelle came to mind first for some reason. Anyway, and back to confined-area operations, the recommended mnemonic is WOTFEEL, which stands for wind, obstructions, terrain, failure (i.e., where you’d go if the engine suddenly quit), entry, exit, and landmark. My instructor rightly insisted I recite and describe these as I did my high and then low circle around the proposed landing zone. Since I wanted to get my license, I complied. But I still think OWLFEET would be a better mnemonic. The actual order in which you review these items is unimportant. I never have been able to sell this idea, however.
Two more sets of frequent air destinations with common names concerning which I’ve heard about wrong flights: Ontario, California and Canada and Rochester, Minnesota (the Mayo Clinic) and New York.
Invited a London-based friend of Bulgarian origin to my wedding, in Jackson Hole. Two days before, I get a call from her. She was at Heathrow and had discovered her ticket was to Jackson, MS. She said she felt bad about having berated the JH hotel staff when the staff trying to arrange her airport pickup kept telling her they couldn't find her flight.
But then again, 50 miles in SoCal's is like 5 miles everywhere else in the US. A drop in the bucket. Now if it had been like say, 150 miles away, then that probably would've taken some major amount of time.
I think that one should be officially filed under “cool story, bro…”.
2 Panama Citys and 2 San Joses - 1 of each in the States and the others in Panama and Costa Rica. Should be some interesting stories there 🤔
Two Santiagos, Chile and the Dominican Republic. Thanks to the ethnic crowd the latter is one of the leading destinations out of New York.
There’s also a Santiago in Cuba but there are no flights from the US.
Years ago a German tourisy was stranded in San Jode California because she got on the wrong plane. It became a story because no one in San Jose speaks German and they had to call the German consul in San Francisco to clear it up.
I met a bright young man from Mexico at a VDARE conference in their defensive castle in Berkeley Springs, WV. He'd originally flown to Berkeley, CA.
Different places.
I've often found Americans to be a bit "geographically challenged". I got chatting to a very pleasant American couple a few years ago while visiting the USA. They asked where I was from originally and I told them North Wales. They asked if that was near New South Wales.
😅
When in England I discovered that no one had any idea where Philadelphia is (not sure they'd even heard of it). That's when I realized it's a form of vanity to think foreigners know much about your own country. But at least I was 20 when I figured this out (perhaps you have a similar excuse).
It's usually found in the cheese aisle isn't it ?
:-) Yes!! You might also like scrapple.
No.
Who remembers the tv ad?
"Philadelphia? Is it continental?" "European, actually."
New York, Florida, Texas, and California are about as much as you can expect from an Englishman.
I always thought the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia with all the Welsh place names were about as "old money" as you can get in the US. Not many Welsh people seem to be aware of the history. I did read somewhere that at one time there was a fashion for townships to adopt Welsh sounding names because they were considered posher ! Anyway, it's unlikely that any Pennsylvania bound travellers will end up in Wales by mistake...
"I did read somewhere that at one time there was a fashion for townships to adopt Welsh sounding names because they were considered posher !"
I didn't know this -- it's definitely a LOL.
I have to admit that the names of those Philly suburbs (and colleges) *do* sound posher to me--whether by the euphonious sound of Welsh or association with Main Line class, I don't know. (I suppose "Goat Crossing" will sound better in any other tongue.)
I was in a bar in Aberdeen last year and they asked me where I was from. I replied West Virginia, but even explaining where it was did no good. They did not even know that Virginia was on the coast.
Never underestimate general ignorance.
My brother in law teaches English at a vocational college in northern England - nothing postmodern, just basic grammar, spelling, comprehension, and business correspondence for aspiring electricians and plumbers. Thinking to stretch them a bit, he set them the opening passage of Bleak House ("fog everywhere") as a comprehension exercise. He annotated every word and phrase he thought might give them trouble: "Michaelmas Term", "Lord Chancellor", "megalosaurus" etc.
He forgot "Kentish". They: "What does Kentish mean?" He: "It refers to Kent." They: "What's Kent?" He: "You know, the county of Kent. As in Canterbury Cathedral. As in the white cliffs of Dover". They had never heard of Kent. I tried the experiment on the girl behind the bar of my local pub, a trainee beautician. She: "Kent? Where's that? It's near London isn't it? Is it a town?" The average people in Yorkshire have barely heard of Kent.
The average Yorkshireman says Kent rather often for someone who has no idea where it is.
I’ll show myself out.
Never overestimate general knowledge.
Since you comment on here, you are probably two standard deviations above average intelligence. The average people are halfway between you and a normal ten year old or an adult with Down's Syndrome.
I once had a baffling phone conversation with a rather irate man who wanted to know why his request hadn’t been handled. The reference number he gave me resembled no reference number I’d ever known my agency to use. I finally discovered he thought he was calling a Canadian government agency; somehow he’d gotten the phone number of a field office of its American equivalent.
Is my husband the only one who told a cab driver to go to Chicago's Midway, because he didn't notice his booking said O'Hare?
> This story would be funnier if when she finally arrived in Portland, Oregon, she discovered that her meeting was actually in Portland, Maine.
I thought this was going to be the punchline.
---
In my neck of the woods Newark and New York sound similar but the former is in New Jersey and is home to one of the three major airports serving the greater-NYC area. In addition if one takes Amtrak, Newark Penn Station and New York Penn Station are consecutive stops, so I'm sure those coming from Philadelphia or DC for the first time have to watch themselves to make sure they don't get off in New Jersey.
On a smaller scale Livingston High School and Governor Livingston High School are located 7½ miles away from each other in the tony suburbs west of Newark. The former is the alma mater of Jason Alexander and Chris Christie, while the latter is one of the top-ranked high schools in New Jersey as it serves the children of Bell Labs where C was invented by Dennis Ritchie
In Manhattan, there is the Union Club and the Union League Club.
There was a story in the news a couple of days ago about a couple of young American ladies who thought they had purchased plane tickets from Rome to Nice, but then found themselves in Tunisia.
I flew into John Wayne airport many years ago.
The legacy media can still function when the topic isn't fraught. In NBC Nightly News' telling of the story, the hapless passengers re-booked their cancelled Rome --> Nice flight at the gate.
"Where are you going?"
"To Nice."
"Here are your new tickets." Rome --> Tunis "Safe travels."
There’s a Portland in Australia too. A travel agent booked me rooms there when I was flying from Melbourne to Portland, Maine!
There was an old episode of Full House (set in San Francisco) where one of the younger characters got on a plane thinking the destination was Oakland, California, but in actuality was Auckland, New Zealand
This was copied from an actual event. A guy was going to Oakland via LA on Air New Zealand. The plane went on toe Auckland. There was an announcement for "passengers to Auckland stay on the plane". He misheard it and ended up in New Zealand. Air New Zealand flew him back for free and milked the story as good PR.
There's a Melbourne in Florida with an airport. It wanted to call its airport Orlando Melbourne but the Orlando airport sued and they compromised on calling it Melbourne Orlando.
This may be an urban legend but I read the Portland, Maine airport has a dedicated service to assist people who wind up there when they intended to fly to Portland, Oregon.
Sympathetic pamphlets at kiosk:
“So You Thought You Were Going To Oregon”
O/T
Steve's graduate alma mater is struggling in football, both on the field and in the stands. They officially drew 31163 last night but by judging from pictures on twitter* it seemed a lot less.
I'm curious on Steve's thoughts on the Rose Bowl as a sports venue. For those not familiar it is located in Pasadena 18 miles northeast of the UCLA campus in Westwood. I understand that they can't play their games at Drake Stadium as it is currently configured but the current setup doesn't seem to be working; maybe they can play at the soccer stadium 18 miles southeast in Carson. Of course that would involve the indignity of playing on the campus of Cal State-Dominguez Hills
* https://x.com/StoolWestwood/status/1966685061819904468
I can recall watching a news segment in the 1960s over whether UCLA should build their own football stadium or not, so it's been a long-running problem.
I'd say the huge new So-Fi stadium near LAX would be the closest at about 10 miles from campus.
I think UCLA would be swallowed up in SoFi until they improve. As it stands only two P4 teams play in NFL stadiums: Miami and Pitt. There are also three G5 teams that do so: UNLV, South Florida*, and Temple. Of these five schools only Temple is really an embarrassment to play in an NFL stadium; they haven't cracked 20000 for a conference game since its 2021 homecoming against Memphis, although it was even worse when they had to share Veterans Stadium with both the Eagles and Phillies
*Despite its name it is located in Tampa
On car trips, my older brother was always reading a book, so he had little directional sense when he started driving in NoVa. He'd invariably turn in the wrong direction at the mouth of our cul de sac. Given directions to take Rt 1 off the Beltway, instead of the exit in downtown Alexandria a couple miles from home, he drove a quarter of the Beltway to the Rt 1 in College Park MD.
As a young teen out with friends I called my dad and asked him to pick us up on “NW North Street”
He had lived in the DC area since his teens, had an excellent sense of direction, and could not for the life of him recall such an address anywhere in the city.
He asked me to put a friend of mine on the phone. She said we could be found on NW N Street.
🤭
Not being stupid, I have never made a mistake like that. Or as I like to say, “There’s a Guayaquil in Ecuador, too!”
But in the spirit of the post, I will mention the time my helicopter instructor had me run through what’s called a confined-area operation, where the pilot is challenged to reconnoiter an off-airport site and figure out how to get down to and then out of it. We found a creek bed which looked suitable. Because it was tucked in some hills and hard to see unless you knew exactly where it was, we sought to input its location into the GPS’s memory. What you do is give it a 5-character name. What you don’t do is pick a name which matches any of the many waypoints used by instrument-rules traffic. Well, my instructor’s initial choice, CONFI, turned out to exist already...in Alaska! Did I mention we were in Texas? Fortunately the GPS instantly went into an Are-you-sure routine and we caught the error in time. Otherwise, though...yes: left to autopilot, which this helicopter had, the darn thing really would’ve tried to fly all the way. And land there too!
Now just riffing: I found pilot training very hard, but I was sustained by the idea that you could never, ever explain any of it to Michelle Obama. Well, AOC too, but I don’t know...Michelle came to mind first for some reason. Anyway, and back to confined-area operations, the recommended mnemonic is WOTFEEL, which stands for wind, obstructions, terrain, failure (i.e., where you’d go if the engine suddenly quit), entry, exit, and landmark. My instructor rightly insisted I recite and describe these as I did my high and then low circle around the proposed landing zone. Since I wanted to get my license, I complied. But I still think OWLFEET would be a better mnemonic. The actual order in which you review these items is unimportant. I never have been able to sell this idea, however.
With some Southern accents, the L would get left out.
Two more sets of frequent air destinations with common names concerning which I’ve heard about wrong flights: Ontario, California and Canada and Rochester, Minnesota (the Mayo Clinic) and New York.
Had a friend new to Colorado accidentally drive east at night thinking they were heading to the mountains. They ended up near Kansas
Invited a London-based friend of Bulgarian origin to my wedding, in Jackson Hole. Two days before, I get a call from her. She was at Heathrow and had discovered her ticket was to Jackson, MS. She said she felt bad about having berated the JH hotel staff when the staff trying to arrange her airport pickup kept telling her they couldn't find her flight.
One of my favorite gags from "Silicon Valley" was the two billionaires with competing private jets referring to Jackson Hole as J-hole.
I know nothing about the place including whether or not that was made up for the show.
There is a linguistic truism that place names ultimately become max two syllables. But in this case, the locals just call it "Jackson."
Similarly, locals around the capital and only large city in Utah refer to it as Salt Lake.
It’s a scenic street spot, I visited by driving there.
Kindred occurrence though doubt in this case there is a whole genre:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7v1d3r6y8mo.amp
(Is about slowly dawning horror that one has turned up as guest at wrong wedding)
“Uh, it’s about 50 miles further.”
But then again, 50 miles in SoCal's is like 5 miles everywhere else in the US. A drop in the bucket. Now if it had been like say, 150 miles away, then that probably would've taken some major amount of time.