Kim was supposed to call when she arrived at Aunt Susan’s place near Sacramento. ETA was 18:30. At 19:13 I called her. She said she got turned around and got lost for a while but was on a particular street that meant she only had to make one more turn to be on the street that Aunt Susan lived on. I figured five, maybe 10 minutes maximum and she would be there. At 19:21 I received a call from Kim. Happy moment! Whoops, celebration started too soon. She was lost worse than before. The street she was on changed into some highway and she didn’t have a clue which way to go. From her description of how she got there I couldn’t find the highway she was on. I had her give me her GPS coordinates, used my calculator to convert them to a matching format for Microsoft MapPoint and found her location on the map. Some way or another she had been going west when she thought she was going east. For the next 39 minutes I navigated as she drove. At 19:29 call waiting said Barb was trying to call me. I ignored her as Kim was going through one of many tough intersections. Kim then reported Barb was trying to call her. We agreed to ignore her for a while. Kim ended up in the wrong lane once and was forced to make a turn she didn’t want to. No problem, she took the next easy turn into a residential area on Winding Creek Road and I navigated her past Random Lane (honest!) back to the street she wanted to be on bypassing that tough intersection. At 19:45 Barb called again. Kim had it easy for a while and I took the call, quickly said things were under control and to leave us alone for a while. Barb wanted to offer suggestions and I wasn’t particularly polite in my response. I switched back to Kim and continued to navigate for her. At 20:00 she recognized Aunt Susan’s house. I called Barb and reported the safe arrival.
Tomorrow Kim drives to her friends place in, supposedly, Santa Cruz. Kim just called a few minutes ago with the address but that address and other streets with the directions she has don’t show up on MapPoint. It’s going to be an interesting day for both of us tomorrow. GPS, MapPoint, and cellphones will get us through.
Glad to see she got where she needed to be safely.
Tell Kim that certain people (ie, me) get paid hourly to provide what you gave away.
Not to be snarky, but the three things people, especially women, need to travel safely to and in regions unknown are a reliable automobile, a reliable firearm and a detailed map.
When I moved to a new state, it was the perfect excuse to upgrade to a mapping GPS. Now when I travel, I always know where I am and have all the maps I need right in my pocket. I can’t really safely focus on that little screen while I’m driving, but I can pull over if I have to. Even better, if I have the laptop with me, I plug the handheld GPS into that and use mapping software on the laptop. Much easier to read a 14″ display, AND the software has speech to give me turn by turn directions as I drive. Gotta love technology!
Unfortunately Kim has what Ry calls an ATM car. One you can pay for with a single withdrawl from your local ATM and in California she can’t legally carry a firearm. She has a detailed map but somehow misread the street signs and ended up going west instead of east even after reversing directions a few times. She has a mapping GPS but it doesn’t have the detail she needed to find Aunt Susan’s house with it.
Her parents were opposed to this trip but the best we were able to do was modify her plans from a straight through drive to making a stop with me in Richland and with her aunt Susan near Sacramento. Unfortunately Kim is incompletely myelinated and even though she thinks this trip was well thought out we fear it will be one of those activities she will later claim “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” See Ry’s dictionary (http://blog.ryjones.org/articles/431.aspx) for definition of the previous phrases.