Prompts, Me, and The Garmin Lady

This week I will be on the road again. It is spring break for the schools there and so I will head north to Snohomish to stay with The Boy for a few days while my daughter, Leah, is working.

I love Snohomish. It’s full of little secondhand shops and antique stores. And just like in Olympia,  the vegan can eat really well in that town.

Also, it is paradise for those of us who LOVE small, independently owned bookstores.

Apparently there is a lot of road construction between my house and my destination.  But don’t worry!  I have our trusty GPS device, complete with The Garmin Lady to guide me around the back-ups and traffic jams.

Yes, The Garmin Lady is better than your mother-in-law at giving orders and (unlike me) she always points the correct direction when she says “Turn Left .”

(Oops! I meant the OTHER left, dear. Sorry.)

Gosh, I’m helpful.

My dear friends Carlie Cullen and Donna L. Sadd are doing another month of blogging to writing prompts and today’s prompt was the arrow you see to right.  I’m not good at writing to prompts, but that arrow perfectly defines my poor hubby’s sense of direction, although he would deny it if asked! Therefore, in the interest of not publicly mocking my spouse I will not be blogging on it.

But I did get him the Garmin originally so that he would listen to directions from someone, anyone.

Unfortunately, you need to update the maps regularly and while my hubby makes his living as an IT man, he’s not really into it at home, so little things like that tend to languish unless they update automatically.

One of the first things we found out was that if you have the Garmin set on “Pedestrian” mode, it will tell you how far an how fast you have walked. This has been really helpful for my hubby who regularly takes long walks on his lunch break. It’s amazing how far he can walk in an hour.

HOWEVER, there is a down side to this. IF you forget to switch it back to driving mode, and you decide to make a random trip down Interstate 5  from Olympia, Washington to, oh, let’s say McMinnville, Oregon, you may have a random encounter with The Garmin Lady that goes like this:

Garmin Lady: “Exit Freeway at next exit.”

Me and Greg: “What? No way, we aren’t even in Chehalis yet!”

Garmin Lady “Recalculating. Take Next Exit, to the right.”

Me and Greg: “There’s something wrong with this thing. We’re passing Longview. We’re nowhere near McMinnville yet. We’re still in Washington, so what she wants us to do, I can’t imagine.”

Garmin Lady “Recalculating. Make U-Turn at next police turnout and then exit freeway, to the right.”

Us: “What?!? That’s just plain crazy, not to mention illegal! Turn that damned thing off!  It’s broken!”

SO, if I am going to rely on this miracle of modern technology to guide me around any traffic jams, this three-hour road trip could really be an adventure. I could end up in Mukilteo, or Woodinville. Heck, I could end up back in Seattle if I really piss The Garmin Lady off!