Then git yerself a GPS........Global Positioning System for those of you not up on somewhat recent technology. My husband took a trip to Montreal with a co-worker who had a GPS in his van, and he came home from the trip 'needing' a GPS of his own because it was so cool and useful. Not only will it guide you to your destination, it knows where you are and will tell you where the nearest coffee shops, restaurants, malls, businesses, etc. are!
My mouth dropped open when he told me what he paid for this top of the line device which he reasoned since he never spends money on himself (true)...and father's day was imminent...and he was getting a bonus from work....he could afford this one luxury that would assist us on trips, of which we seem to be taking a lot since getting the new car. Well, we got a lot of laughs out of this device when we first used it - mainly because we jumped right into using it without learning about all of its features first. Having Ginny GPS in your car telling you where to go is a little weird. We wondered if she would start giving us orders and making decisions for us.
Our first real excursion with portable Ginny was in a caravan of our daughter's friends going to her 'out of town' birthday party to join other friends for the celebration. Since her friend's car had broken down, we were driving some of her friends in a rented van with Ginny GPS, while our daughter drove our car behind us with more of her buddies. My husband very proudly entered into the GPS the address of the girl we needed to pick up on the way. We knew the way to her city... just not how to get to her house.
Well, Ginny tried to direct us off every single ramp there is off of the main highway, when we were nowhere near the city of destination. We finally had to turn the GPS off altogether until we got to the city our way, then Ginny helped us get to the friend's house. When we left there, we should have listened to our senses rather than Ginny's directions. We went the opposite way to what logic told us, and got farther and farther from our final destination. After many kilometers out of the way, we realized Ginny was trying to get us to the toll highway which we were trying to avoid! I didn't know how much longer I could endure Ginny's electronic voice... "re-cal-cu-la-ting"! Then Ginny told us to turn left, but my husband ended up being in the left turning lane to a Wal-Mart! As I suspected would happen, the cell phone rang. My poor daughter following behind us as we drove into oblivion, was phoning wondering why we were driving through a Wal-Mart parking lot, when we were going to be anywhere near our city of destination, and informed us she had to go to the bathroom!!! My husband was close to losing it by that point, while I stifled giggles. Normally we have no problem at all driving to this city.
The folks in our van were laughing and joking that we were carrying all the food for the party... so perhaps we should just give up, let Ginny guide us to the nearest restaurant, and maybe the chefs would cook our food for us and we'd party there! Well the evening was still young when we did finally get to the amazing 'party' house with wonderful bathrooms for my daughter, a huge deck for entertaining, beautiful weather and fabulous friends. Ginny has settled down for us now that we've gotten to know her better, although she has led us to a couple of phantom restaurants!
Here's my advice if you buy a GPS. Be sure you program it to find the shortest route, to ignore toll roads and dirt roads, etc. Don't follow the GPS blindly - know where you're going first (does that make any sense to you?) And don't ignore the warning you find everytime you turn it on to use it. It's a very distracting device. Keep your eyes on the road....even if it's the wrong one!
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