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cuts, short or long
Dec. 8th, 2006 11:12 pmI don't know if I can say this without being misunderstood. But as a person very sensitive to maps and geography I feel that I should try.
It was cartographic ignorance that stranded the Kim family. I'm not sure how much play this story has gotten outside CA and OR, but this is the San Francisco family who, driving home on I-5 from Seattle, missed the exit south of Roseburg that would have taken them out to the coast on a state highway for their hotel reservation in Gold Beach. So they drove on for a ways and then took a back road directly over the mountains. It was dark, cold, and wet; they lost their way and got stuck in the snow. The mother and children survived a week in the car and were rescued; the father had set out for help and died of hypothermia.
I am in awe of the courage and resourcefulness they showed while trapped in the mountains. I don't think I could have done half as well in the circumstances.
But I am terribly dismayed at the bad planning and overconfidence in their map-reading (apparently it was a state highway map) that got them into this situation in the first place. ( Read more... )
It was cartographic ignorance that stranded the Kim family. I'm not sure how much play this story has gotten outside CA and OR, but this is the San Francisco family who, driving home on I-5 from Seattle, missed the exit south of Roseburg that would have taken them out to the coast on a state highway for their hotel reservation in Gold Beach. So they drove on for a ways and then took a back road directly over the mountains. It was dark, cold, and wet; they lost their way and got stuck in the snow. The mother and children survived a week in the car and were rescued; the father had set out for help and died of hypothermia.
I am in awe of the courage and resourcefulness they showed while trapped in the mountains. I don't think I could have done half as well in the circumstances.
But I am terribly dismayed at the bad planning and overconfidence in their map-reading (apparently it was a state highway map) that got them into this situation in the first place. ( Read more... )
