Currently Chasing: Reliable Directions

So I drove to North Carolina to pick up my daughter this weekend. I wasn’t alone though. A huge bug committed suicide on my windshield about a half hour into the trip. My wipers were not strong enough to remove the body, so he rode with me the duration of the trip. He wasn’t alone out there for long. By trip end hundreds of bloody carcasses lined the glass.

And why wouldn’t they want to throw themselves into oncoming traffic? Think about it. Even your briefest appearance in any well lit area becomes a life threatening encounter. Humans name the most annoying of their kind after you. All the girl bugs just want to be friends or are fucking your friends, because face it, you all look alike. There really aren’t a lot of options when you’re a bug.

Anyway, bugs weren’t my only problem with this trip. The other problem was my damn wack-ass GPS! I swear - if cars are females then GPS’s are dudes! How do I know this? Because most cars are reliable, and most GPS’s are damn liars! They may have the voice of a female, but that is just another part of the lie! They act like angels and saviors, but they are really the Devil!



Now granted, I didn’t decide to leave for the trip until 9 p.m., which I know is a little late to embark on a 5-6 hour trip, but I had to squeeze every last second out of my two weeks of freedom. So that included making last minute plans to attend a Charm City Roller Girls event.

These girls are hell on wheels. They have cools names like Judy Boom and Esy Ex. They wear tight clothes and skate round and round knocking chicks right the hell out. Why not me!? I want a cool name like Scary Terri or Brittany Smears. I want to skate around in multi-colored, Punky Brewster inspired garb. I want to knock out a roller skank or two! However, I could probably live without the revenge punch to the gut. And this really isn’t a good year for tight clothes. And I prefer flip flops to skates. So basically I don’t want to be a roller girl, I just want to be referred to by a bad-ass name.

So anyway, I leave the event at 9, plug the ending address into my GPS and am shocked at the results. It tells me I will arrive at a convenient 6:30 a.m! What the fucking fuck?! I’m freaking out, but figure it will recalculate the time once I actually get on the highway. So my trip begins, as does my conversation with my GPS, which goes something like this:

GPS: Make a right turn at Lincoln Street.
Me: Yes sir, I am now making a right turn.
GPS: Updating Route.
Me: What the fuck do you mean? You told me to make a right and I made a right.
GPS: Make a U-Turn in .2 miles.
Me: I can’t. There is a no U-Turn sign there.
GPS: Updating Route.
Me: Well hurry the fuck up because there is a fork in the road.
GPS: Turn slight left .4 miles ago.
Me: FUCK YOU.

So there you go. It took me 45 minutes to get out of Baltimore and find the 295. Then it told me to take the 395 for 10 miles and merge onto the 495. I was waiting for it to tell me to take exit 666 then start spinning and spewing green junk and then ultimately explode like an Austin Powers HoBot!

So I call my daughter’s aunt and she tells me to just take the 95 to the 85 to the 40 and I’m there. I went ahead and left the GPS on of course, because really it was the only conversation I had going for me. Of course he only wanted to talk about himself and his immediate plans for the future, and the directions his life is taking. He paid no mind to my attempts to break out of his seemingly complicated, but actually simple, useless and annoyingly bright box!

I wanted to throw the damn GPS out the window, but despite my self-proclaimed idependence, I am even less confident in my abilities to find my way without a man. I mean GPS.

Needless to say, be the time I arrived to N.C., me and my GPS had broken up. But we got back together 30 minutes later when I needed help finding a Dennys.