Mastodawn

I got to borrow a bike today and I biked waaayyy longer than I meant to because Christchurch's biking infrastructure is AWESOME, it's super flat and easy to bike here, and I am still constantly guessing directions wrong because I'm in the opposite hemisphere I'm used to (took the "scenic route")

Extra bonus points to me for not making any dumb mistakes while biking on the opposite side of the road from what I'm used to, while in traffic, in a city!

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Christine Malec Feb 20

@sundogplanets I'm interested in the experience of sighted folk travelling in the hemosphere their not used to and trying to orient themselves. Seems to me that the sun's orientation would mess you up when trying to encorporate compass direction.

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Prof. Sam Lawler Feb 20

@ChristineMalec Yeah, it's weird how much I intuitively use the sun for direction without thinking about it.

I live at 50 degrees north, so the sun is pretty much always in the south (except for around sunrise and sunset in the summer). Right now, I'm at 44 degrees south, and the sun is in the north and I keep getting my directions backwards! It would be hilarious if it wasn't so annoying.

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macattackmicmac

@sundogplanets @ChristineMalec Same thing happened to me when moving from the southern hemisphere to the northern one. Took me about a year to get used to it. The worst part was the second guessing when I intuitively chose the right direction, but because my intuition was wrong so often, I switched to the wrong one.