Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 284 posts

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#101

Post by technothrasher »

jonnybgood wrote: post #51
reaperducer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Mexico Magazine has a column every month where people tell their tales of people thinking that the U.S. state of New Mexico is in the nation of Mexico. Things like insurance and credit card companies cancelling their accounts because they moved out of the country. Apparently it happens all the time.

It is for this reason New Mexico license plates have “New Mexico, USA” on them. For those not aware, every state simply puts the name of the state on their license plate but New Mexico adds ‘USA’ to theirs. The only state that I believe does this.

I believe they started that in the late 1960's. Not all of the plates have USA on them. The standard yellow plates do, but the alternate "centennial" plates don't. Also, some of the specialty plates do and some don't.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#102

Post by klyrs »

smnrchrds wrote: post #11
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador must confuse people too. I never remember which one is which without Googling it.

I attended a conference in St John's. Two of our plenary speakers ended up in New Brunswick. One missed their slot, the other was scheduled for day 2. This is a familiar problem, and the organizers PLASTERED the website with reminders to avoid NB.

I'm told that the second s in St John's stands for screech. (or, I just came up with that mnemonic on the spot. we may never know)

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#103

Post by rafaelc »

"Kreuz, who typically enjoyed drinking 17 beers a day, was a little groggy, and on hearing this, grabbed his suitcase, got off the plane, went through customs, jumped in a cab and asked the driver to take him to the city."

My takeaway from the article was don't drink 17 beers a day

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#105

Post by tshaddox »

geocrasher wrote: post #68
heelix wrote: post #66

There was a time where I use to fly internationally very frequently. Very use to having the manager sort out the car/flight/hotel with our travel agent - so for the most part I just grabbed the tickets and go. Manager asked me - can you go to London? It was pretty cold in Minnesota, and London sounded nice. Turned brain off, got on the flight, and landed way too early. London, Canada... ffs, and it was even colder th…

Just be glad they didn't send you to Paris TX or Rome, GA. Edit: I forgot Memphis, TN.

We also had plenty of those around where I grew up in Missouri. Visitors always got a kick out of this road sign:

https://goo.gl/maps/FyJZdXuKDv8LKbhm7

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/uW3yzWj.jpg

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#108

Post by mauvehaus »

technothrasher wrote: post #101
jonnybgood wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is for this reason New Mexico license plates have “New Mexico, USA” on them. For those not aware, every state simply puts the name of the state on their license plate but New Mexico adds ‘USA’ to theirs. The only state that I believe does this.

I believe they started that in the late 1960's. Not all of the plates have USA on them. The standard yellow plates do, but the alternate "centennial" plates don't. Also, some of the specialty plates do and some don't.

In a rather unfortunate coincidence, Ohio started issuing yellow plates with red text to people with too many DUI convictions a decade or so back. You don't often see plates from NM in OH, but when you do, it's a bit confusing.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#110

Post by drdeadringer »

nataz wrote: post #91
mikewarot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I learned the hard way that Dulles is NOT in Washington DC, we took the bus out to the Air and Space Museum, which we assumed was in DC... the $75 dollar taxi ride that took 1 1/2 hours to show up to pick us up was no fun. Fun Bonus Fact: We drove to DC, so we could have just driven there, but thought a cheap Bus round trip was more fun as we could both see the sights, and not stress about traffic.

The more famous Smithsonian Air and Space museum is in D.C. right on the national mall, maybe 10 min from national airport (technicality in virginia, but right next to DC). You visited the udvar-hazy center which is out by Dulles airport in Chantilly. It is still part of the smithsonian, but more focused on displaying lots of different aircraft in a few large hangers. Very impressive and worth a visit, but not the ma…

Last time I was in DC, they had recently installed one of the space shuttles into the Dulles-area Smithsonian hanger. I was in "DC Central" and made a point to bus out to the off-site hanger for the space shuttle (and everything else there).

Although I did my paranoid pre-trip research [partial thanks to dad], I can understand the confusion.

Post reply on HN