Google, I promise to be nice if you will...

Dear Google,

What's the deal? I thought we were friends? I thought you could take a little constructive criticism, but I guess I was wrong.

I mean it wasn't very nice trying to get us lost, just because I said your directions from the east bay to the north bay didn't make much sense. It was especially mean to get us lost in a place so inhospitable to outsiders who dare to venture in.

I mean sure, the Bay Area can be a tricky place, what with having to go around hills, and streets veering into others only sometimes changing their names, but the directions you gave us missed one very major step.

You were very specific with where to get off the freeway. You not only told us to get off on Los Gatos Saratoga Road, but that it was also Highway 9, and exit 20A. Which we did.

Then you told us to continue on to Los Gatos Saratoga Road before turning left on Los Gatos Boulevard. So we did continue, we continued to the left because that was the only direction we could go. Now, that was a pretty hard left and usually when you say that it is more of a veer, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, because sometimes when you say "continue" you really mean just follow the exit ramp. That's cool, really. I mean I can usually figure it out, what with streeet signs and all.

But, I wasn't in a city that likes street signs. I was in Los Gatos, a town that would probably prefer us city folk stay out. And they are pretty clear about that, too. Because we looked really hard for that left turn onto Los Gatos Boulevard, but this is a city that tries its damnedest to make sure those signs are illegible. My vision is better than 20/20 (yes, its true), but you should tell Los Gatos that because they have a giant boulevard they really should get street signs that are appropriately sized. Regular residential size street signs on the right hand side, covered by trees and printed in beige lettering on a milk chocolate background are pretty difficult to read.

But that wasn't our problem. See, even your fancy street view shows the problem.


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Oh, what is that? Its a median. A very sturdy and very long median off of an an exit that you call 20B. Hmmm, well that might be the problem. If there is an exit 20A it must be on the other side of the freeway, because this was the only Los Gatos Saratoga Road/Highway 9 exit. Its also on a street with no sign which is what made us "continue" on Los Gatos Saratoga Road, because really what other option did we have? But, we knew when we had passed your handy mileage marker and had still not seen our left hand turn that something was wrong. Besides, at this point we were in some enclave I'd never heard of and not in Los Gatos.

Being the enterprising young people that we are, we figured that maybe that left on Los Gatos Boulevard, was really supposed to be a left on Los Gatos Saratoga Road (which we couldn't have done because of that pesky median), so we made a U-turn - careful to avoid the H2's and lexuses in our path - and tried going in the opposite direction.

Only guess what? As we started looking for our next right (because we assumed we had now made that left) which, again, is pretty hard to do in that town, we came to a T in the road where we had to turn on none other than Los Gatos Boulevard.

So, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, by implying that you didn't really understand how to get from the east bay to the north bay, and that you were a poser because you live in Mountain View. I mean I can only guess that your forgotten U-turn was on purpose, since Los Gatos is only twenty minutes away from Mountain View - according to you at least.

No hurt feelings?
s.