She left her map in San Francisco

Published Sept. 15, 2007

My husband had the steering wheel.
I had the map.
And off we went to see the sights of San Francisco.
It wasn't five minutes later that I was wishing I had the steering wheel instead of the map.
Who does have more power in the rental car? The spouse who is driving or the spouse who is directing?
There was so much to sightsee. We wanted to drive through the Presidio and go shopping in Haight-Ashbury and Chinatown. We wanted to drive down the World's Crookedest Street and ride the cable car. We wanted to see the view of the city from Coit Tower. And we wanted to eat dinner on Fisherman's Wharf.
To get all that done, we had to have a plan (devised, of course, by the person with the map), and we had to stick to it (turn where the person with the map says to turn).
That should mean the map-holder has the power, right?
You would think.
We had no sooner entered the grounds of the Presidio - a former Army post that is now part of the Golden Gate National Park and is known for its spectacular views - when we came to a fork in the road.
"Go right," I said to my husband as I manically waved a rolled up map in that direction.
He made a left.
"We were supposed to go right!"
"You didn't tell me soon enough!"
"But that way is the Scenic Route," I said, collapsing back in my seat and pouting as any diligent navigator would.
He just kept driving probably to make me mad but maybe because we were on a very narrow and winding road in a forest of very tall cypress trees.
I went back to studying my map to try to figure out how get us out of this jam - and back on the Scenic Route, so designated by the signs that were posted along the way. It turned out that we were going counterclockwise instead of clockwise on the road that ran along the perimeter of the park. I guess that was OK but it was probably more scenic if you drove the right direction.
We parked the car - a Mustang convertible - and got out to see the view of the Golden Gate Bridge (which is actually red, by the way) and all our navigational woes were forgotten. It was so beautiful.
We actually got around pretty well when we were on city streets. We found Chinatown and the cable car without any problem. It was the parks - greenery and trees - that got us all bollixed up.
We wound up in Golden Gate Park - San Francisco's version of Central Park - as we tried to get to Haight-Ashbury, that famous intersection associated with beat poets and hippies.
I hadn't studied the map for this park the way I had studied the one for the Presidio. We were lost. As I looked at the map, my husband looked for a way out. He saw it - a glimmer of city streets beyond the green - at the exact moment I figured out where we were in the park.
He pulled into the turning lane just as I said, "Go straight."
"I can't go straight. I'm in the turning lane."
"Just go straight," I said as we rounded the corner. I was sitting on my hands to keep from grabbing the steering wheel out of his.
And then I had an epiphany.
We aren't really "map people." We rarely have a plan. We live life by the seat of our pants, so why should we change now just because we are lost in a strange city?
A sense of calm washed over me, and I folded up the map and stuck it into my purse.
I wasn't really lost anyway. I knew exactly where I was.
Sitting next to the guy with the steering wheel I promised to love in sickness and in health - and, so it would follow, in bumper-to-bumper traffic in San Francisco.