Wednesday, August 06, 2008

The Middle of Nowhere

I was making a delivery to the Summers/Scott cottage. I stopped at my parents' place first to make a delivery to them. My Mom suggested she come with me to the cottage. I could use her help and we'd enjoy the afternoon together.

We used her car. We were going to take the back roads to Sturgeon. It's faster (and more scenic) than taking the highway. The only problem was, neither of us could remember the name of the road where we'd need to make the first turn. We had the landmarks for the turn, but not the street name.

"No problem," she said. "We'll program the navigator." Her 300C has an in-dash navigation system. Once we'd programmed the address (not exactly the address, but a street near to the address, since the cottage's address doesn't exist), we set out.

Millie, her navigator's voice, instructed us to turn several times before the road we were looking for. It seemed like she was getting frustrated with having to recalculate. "You are off the specified route," we were told before Millie adjusted.

We came to The Glen Road and turned...even though Millie didn't want us to. Heading east on The Glen Road, Millie recalculated the trip several more times. She'd given up asking us to make U-turns to return to the specified route. Is it possible for a navigation system's voice to sound exasperated? I was waiting for a message like 'Get there yourself' to appear or for Millie to say 'To hell with you'.

Somewhere east of County Road #6 and about 5 kilometers west of #35, I looked at the navigator display screen. We were officially in the middle of nowhere. We're the arrow - and there's nothing around us. According to Millie, we weren't even on a road!

We made it there and back.
I've been to the middle of nowhere and it looked a lot like Cambray.