Monday, July 19, 2010

My New Pal

My new job involves a great deal of driving, and I thought I could make it work with my good old Thomas Bros. guide. After three weeks of getting lost all over in cities I thought I knew rather well, I finally broke down and bought a GPS. My new pal and I started out together today for the first time. I decided to do whatever it said, whether or not I thought I knew better. I input the first address, which my information had told me was in North Hollywood. My new pal choked, and offered me a few similar addresses. I had to pull out the Thomas Bros. to determine that the address for which I was looking was across the street from North Hollywood, but was actually in Los Angeles. Great. My new pal is a stickler. Of course, now that I had looked at the Thomas guide, I knew where I was going, but nonetheless, I followed my new pal's instructions and he got me there just fine. Relations between us were going quite well until I got an emergency call which took two hours, from noon to 2 p.m. Once it was over I was quite hungry and headed for a favorite Thai restaurant a mile or so away. My new pal informed me that the restaurant would be on my right. I was pretty sure it was on the left, but it had been several years since I'd been there, and I figured it might have moved. I was driving in the right lane when the restaurant appeared on the left, exactly where I had thought it was, and my new pal announced, "Approaching Thai BBQ on your right" as I passed it on my left. It's bad enough that I can't tell left from right, but when my GPS can't either, it's a bad sign. I went around the block and back to the restaurant parking lot before my new pal could even finish saying, "recalculating". And I made him pay for his own lunch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I hope he had money to pay for his lunch. If not, he deserves to go hungry for giving you the incorrect information since he is supposed be a "professional" of getting around cities. Maybe you'll find out when he says left, he means right and vis-a-versa?