Starscream
2010-02-13, 11:27 AM
So let me tell you about my day...
My cousin is getting married today, so yesterday I had to travel from Fort Walton Beach Florida to Nashville Tennessee in order to attend.
I wake up bright and early, at six AM. I am already mostly packed. I have printed out some Google Maps directions. I have plenty of money for gas and snacks. Someone has even lent me their GPS, so I don't need to read the directions while driving. It's an 8 hour trip and I figure I can be there by three. Things are looking up.
I tell the GPS my destination and it calculates a route. Looks like a good efficient route, too. I decide to follow it. After a while I miss one turn, but that's okay, the GPS just compensates by recalculating based on you current position. It'll probably just have me loop around and keep going, right?
Wrong. It develops a whole new route without informing me. Length of the original route? 440 miles. New one? 656. I don't notice for a while because the basic directions (West and then North) seem the same. It isn't until I realize I have been going West for rather a long time that it occurs to me to check. Seems this new one will have me going west literally for hours, turn around and then go east. I wasted two hours getting back on course. Hell of a bug, I have not ruled out that the thing was possessed by a demon. I start over, this time using my printed directions.
Next step: navigating Alabama (cue banjo music). As soon as I cross the border into the state, I hit a blizzard. Like a minute after going over the line. Sunny throughout Florida, blizzard a hundred yards into Alabama. Uncanny. And while I hate to stereotype, Southern people cannot drive in snow. They slow down to 40 below the limit and still keep swerving across lanes. I'm from Northern Ohio, so I've skipped through worse weather. Now traffic is slowed to a crawl. But after I get on a bigger, better plowed road, things pick up.
That's when a trucker runs me off the road. Honestly. It was an accident, he immediately stopped to see if I was alright (I was, apart from my heart being in my esophagus) and I didn't make a big deal out of it. I was just happy to be in possession of all my limbs.
Now I am driving through Alabama. Miles and miles of bloody Alabama. 350 miles or so to be precise. It's basically a straight line through the whole state, and the weather has mostly cleared up, but literally every ten miles or so I hit ten miles of construction. The speed limit plummets, lanes are closed, and because I have long since squandered my early start there is a lot of traffic. The attempts to drive me astray, freeze me out, and send me careening off the road were annoying, but this is psychological torture. I'm starting to wish for more bad things to happen, because at least that was interesting.
Finally, after about 6.5 hours of this, I make it to Tennessee. And promptly get lost again. Turns out my exit was closed, Google didn't know about it, and I think all the time of driving in a straight line has reduced my brain to processed cheese and I have now lost the ability to find my own way around this. So I have to pull over, take out the hated GPS (which was in my glove box this whole time, probably cursing in Latin and spitting pea soup on everything) to find the road I'm looking for.
Finally I get there. I have made it! I have triumphed! I have...locked my keys in the car.
Bugger.
Now comes an hour of waiting for AAA to come and jimmy my lock. Up until now I have withstood attacks from the forces of nature, technology, and other people but this is the first time my own dumb self has done it. While standing out in the cold waiting, I contemplate what is still to come. I would not rule out an asteroid strike at this point.
But no, that was the last catastrophe of the night. Apparently the universe gave up on trying to prevent me from getting to Nashville. The 8 hour trip has by now become a 13 hour one, but it's over.
Until I drive back on Sunday. If you never hear from me again, just know that I have no regrets. So long as I took the GPS down with me.:smallsmile:
My cousin is getting married today, so yesterday I had to travel from Fort Walton Beach Florida to Nashville Tennessee in order to attend.
I wake up bright and early, at six AM. I am already mostly packed. I have printed out some Google Maps directions. I have plenty of money for gas and snacks. Someone has even lent me their GPS, so I don't need to read the directions while driving. It's an 8 hour trip and I figure I can be there by three. Things are looking up.
I tell the GPS my destination and it calculates a route. Looks like a good efficient route, too. I decide to follow it. After a while I miss one turn, but that's okay, the GPS just compensates by recalculating based on you current position. It'll probably just have me loop around and keep going, right?
Wrong. It develops a whole new route without informing me. Length of the original route? 440 miles. New one? 656. I don't notice for a while because the basic directions (West and then North) seem the same. It isn't until I realize I have been going West for rather a long time that it occurs to me to check. Seems this new one will have me going west literally for hours, turn around and then go east. I wasted two hours getting back on course. Hell of a bug, I have not ruled out that the thing was possessed by a demon. I start over, this time using my printed directions.
Next step: navigating Alabama (cue banjo music). As soon as I cross the border into the state, I hit a blizzard. Like a minute after going over the line. Sunny throughout Florida, blizzard a hundred yards into Alabama. Uncanny. And while I hate to stereotype, Southern people cannot drive in snow. They slow down to 40 below the limit and still keep swerving across lanes. I'm from Northern Ohio, so I've skipped through worse weather. Now traffic is slowed to a crawl. But after I get on a bigger, better plowed road, things pick up.
That's when a trucker runs me off the road. Honestly. It was an accident, he immediately stopped to see if I was alright (I was, apart from my heart being in my esophagus) and I didn't make a big deal out of it. I was just happy to be in possession of all my limbs.
Now I am driving through Alabama. Miles and miles of bloody Alabama. 350 miles or so to be precise. It's basically a straight line through the whole state, and the weather has mostly cleared up, but literally every ten miles or so I hit ten miles of construction. The speed limit plummets, lanes are closed, and because I have long since squandered my early start there is a lot of traffic. The attempts to drive me astray, freeze me out, and send me careening off the road were annoying, but this is psychological torture. I'm starting to wish for more bad things to happen, because at least that was interesting.
Finally, after about 6.5 hours of this, I make it to Tennessee. And promptly get lost again. Turns out my exit was closed, Google didn't know about it, and I think all the time of driving in a straight line has reduced my brain to processed cheese and I have now lost the ability to find my own way around this. So I have to pull over, take out the hated GPS (which was in my glove box this whole time, probably cursing in Latin and spitting pea soup on everything) to find the road I'm looking for.
Finally I get there. I have made it! I have triumphed! I have...locked my keys in the car.
Bugger.
Now comes an hour of waiting for AAA to come and jimmy my lock. Up until now I have withstood attacks from the forces of nature, technology, and other people but this is the first time my own dumb self has done it. While standing out in the cold waiting, I contemplate what is still to come. I would not rule out an asteroid strike at this point.
But no, that was the last catastrophe of the night. Apparently the universe gave up on trying to prevent me from getting to Nashville. The 8 hour trip has by now become a 13 hour one, but it's over.
Until I drive back on Sunday. If you never hear from me again, just know that I have no regrets. So long as I took the GPS down with me.:smallsmile: