{"id":8957,"date":"2025-11-28T10:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T10:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/relative-location-example\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T10:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T10:05:07","slug":"relative-location-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/relative-location-example\/","title":{"rendered":"Relative Location Example"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let me tell you about the time I tried to explain &quot;relative location&quot; to my kids during a cross-country road trip \u2013 and accidentally became a student of everyday American geography. We were somewhere in rural Iowa when our GPS lost signal (thanks, spotty Midwest coverage), and my youngest panic-whispered, &quot;Are we\u2026 <em>lost<\/em> lost?&quot; That\u2019s when I realized: knowing how to describe where you are <em>in relation to stuff people actually recognize<\/em> is a survival skill.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here\u2019s the thing<\/strong>: Relative location isn\u2019t just a textbook term. It\u2019s the reason Midwesterners give directions like \u201cTurn left where the Dairy Queen <em>used<\/em> to be\u201d and New Yorkers say \u201cTwo blocks past the bodega with the cat.\u201d I learned this the hard way when Google Maps once told me a gas station was \u201c0.3 miles northeast\u201d of my Airbnb. Cool \u2013 but the handwritten note taped to the fridge said, \u201cWalk toward the giant peeling billboard for Mountain Dew. If you hit the llama farm, you\u2019ve gone too far.\u201d Guess which one got me there faster?<\/p>\n<p><strong>My turning point<\/strong>: During that Iowa detour, I defaulted to my old corporate job habit of overspecifying (\u201cWe\u2019re 42 miles southwest of Des Moines!\u201d). My 8-year-old blinked at me like I\u2019d spoken Klingon. Then my husband \u2013 a guy who once navigated an entire Colorado camping trip using only brewery logos as landmarks \u2013 shrugged and said, \u201cWe\u2019re between Casey\u2019s pizza joint and that church with the pumpkin patch. Backtrack to Casey\u2019s, then head toward the water tower shaped like a corn cob.\u201d <em>Lightbulb moment.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>What works (and what doesn\u2019t)<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Landmark over coordinates<\/strong>: Saying \u201cIt\u2019s across from the Target with the Starbucks\u201d &gt; \u201cLatitude 40.7128\u00b0 N.\u201d (Unless you\u2019re talking to a park ranger. Maybe.)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Know your audience<\/strong>: My Chicago cousin understands \u201cthree L stops from Wrigley.\u201d My Nevada aunt needs \u201cwhere they filmed that Bon Jovi desert scene in the \u201880s.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hybrid approach<\/strong>: I now screenshot Google Maps <em>and<\/em> text locals \u201cWhat\u2019s the can\u2019t-miss thing near X?\u201d before trips. Last month in Nashville, \u201cIt\u2019s behind the mural where everyone takes TikTok dances\u201d saved me 20 minutes of GPS arguing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Oh \u2013 and rookie mistake alert<\/strong>: Early on, I assumed <em>everyone<\/em> knew major highways. Told a gas station clerk in Arizona we were \u201cjust off I-10.\u201d He deadpanned, \u201cHoney, everything\u2019s \u2018just off I-10\u2019 out here. You gotta be more\u2026 <em>specific<\/em> specific.\u201d Now I lead with nearby fast-food chains (love them or hate them, you always know where the McDonald\u2019s arches are).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Try this next time<\/strong>: When giving directions, pause and ask: \u201cIf I erased all street names, what would stand out here?\u201d Maybe it\u2019s the house with 27 garden gnomes. The pothole that\u2019s been coned off since 2019. The \u201cSORRY WE\u2019RE OPEN!\u201d diner sign. Those are the pins in America\u2019s real-life map.<\/p>\n<p>So yeah, relative location? It\u2019s less about compasses and more about paying attention to what makes a place <em>weird<\/em> or <em>memorable<\/em>. Next time you\u2019re waffling between Waze and a stranger\u2019s advice at a rest stop\u2026 go with the one that mentions the pink flamingo yard. Trust me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me tell you about the time I tried to explain &quot;relative location&quot; to my kids during a cross-country road trip \u2013 and accidentally became a student of everyday American geography. We were somewhere in rural Iowa when our GPS lost signal (thanks, spotty Midwest coverage), and my youngest panic-whispered, &quot;Are we\u2026 lost lost?&quot; That\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}