Michigan - Not an ambi-turner

Have you seen the movie Zoolander? No? Well, let me introduce the following scene from the movie:

Derek Zoolander(Ben Stiller) is a male supermodel who has been challenged to a "walk-off" (competitive runway walking...don't ask, I don't know either) by his rival, an up-and-coming male supermodel Hansel (Owen Wilson). Here they are in the walk-off ---



Immediately after this scene Zoolander is talking to a reporter, Matilda (Christine Taylor, also Ben Stiller's wife in real life, FYI) and explains that the walk-off didn't have to be so sophisticated. All Hansel would have had to do is turn left.

Apparently, Derek Zoolander cannot turn left on a runway. As he explains,

"I'm not an ambi-turner"

Well, let me tell you something: Michigan is not an ambi-turner. You cannot turn left onto many of these roads.

How the hell does that work? That was my question when we first came out to visit, but I'm getting the hang of it now and, if I may say so, it's actually quite brilliant.

Woodward Avenue, also known as US-Hwy 1 and the first paved road in America (see, you're learning things from this blog!), is a busy road that runs diagonally out of downtown Detroit northwest to Automation Alley, now known as broken down empty buildings and burned out factories. You cannot turn left off of Woodward onto another road.

No left turn lanes.

But I don't want to mislead you, you are allowed to turn left here. It's not like they removed the left turn signal from my car when I registered here (and yes, I did get Michigan plates, I managed to live in PA for two years without switching out of my Oregon plates, but I had to break down and embrace the Michigan department of transportation - which is actually the "secretary of state" office here...learning learning learning!).

Instead of turning left directly onto the street of your choice, you have to go straight through that light and immediately after there is a switch-back cut into the median. Or, you turn RIGHT on the the street you actually want to turn left onto, and you take one of those switch-backs to go the direction your want. Seriously.

So you get to make U-turns. Legally. Frequently. (This is difficult for me to describe in writing, so I may force Matthew to drive while I video the process because I know how interesting this is to you all).

Anyway, I think this is just about perfect for me because I am ALWAYS going to wrong direction and frequently have to turn around. It's like they built these roads just for me. Not only are they set up with built-in U-turns, but they are laid out in a grid - roads go either North/South or East/West (except Woodward, which goes kind of diagonally, but I can handle one wonky road). And they have easy to understand names like "13 Mile Road" (the road we live on) which is exactly one mile south of "14 Mile Road" (ho ho! Clever!) and one mile north of...wait for it...yes, "12 Mile Road."

I don't even have to use my GPS here, which is good, because I used to plug it in, program the address and promptly ignore it. The GPS would say "take a left at the next light" and I would be, like, "nah, that can't be right." As it turns out, the GPS was pretty much always (okay, always) right and I was wrong, so I still did a lot of turning around and back tracking (all while the GPS is screaming "MAKE A LEGAL U-TURN").

So Michigan isn't exactly an ambi-turner, but it's is a u-turner, which is even better.