Welcome to Florida

 

February 5, 2012 – afternoon - Welcome to Florida, Land of Unidentifiable Roadkill

We have reached our destination in St. Augustine, despite the evil machinations of the GPS troll.  In case you’re not aware of it, driving in an unfamiliar area causes me to go through an extreme personality change.  In other words, I go berserk, and that’s exactly what happened this morning.  When we drove out of the Amtrak Auto Train Station in Sanford (after waiting over an hour for our car to be unloaded), the GPS took us in ever-widening circles.  At one point, it said to go “off road.”  Yelling obscenities at it and threatening to toss it out the window didn’t make it any more cooperative.  In desperation, I turned to Elliott to navigate from some printed directions, but that was no help whatsoever.  Eventually, after finding ourselves back where we started, I decided to give the GPS one more chance to redeem itself.  This time, miraculously, it brought us to US 4 East, an extremely boring road, but going in the right direction.  I knew I was far from home when I couldn’t even identify the roadkill, which was plentiful.  After the GPS directed us onto 95 North, another extremely boring road, it made an ominous announcement about low battery.  Despite our best efforts (we used the charger that connects to the cigarette lighter in the car), the screen went black about five minutes later.  So there I was, driving north towards Jacksonville, with no GPS and a navigator who was fumbling with his magnifying glass as he tried to read the directions.  After making a few wrong turns, we actually found ourselves at the hotel in St. Augustine Beach, shortly before noon.

My navigator is taking a little nap right now before the 4 o’clock Road Scholar orientation.  And I am a much more pleasant person again.