Up/down = north/south in my experience near DC as well, although they sometimes are follow the highway directions rather than geographic ones. People say they

Up/down = north/south in my experience near DC as well, although they sometimes are follow the highway directions rather than geographic ones. People say they go "up" to NYC even though NYC is slightly more east of DC than north -- the point is that you take 95N to get there. This was even more extreme in Santa Barbara, CA, where the coastline turns east-west, and people talked about taking 101S "down" to Ventura or LA, even though those were 90% east.