The Last Lost Adventure (we can only hope)

As some of you may have noticed, I occasionally lose my way in conditions of heavy traffic or in unfamiliar territory. There have even been times when I’ve taken a misstep or two in somewhat recognizable areas. Okay, and maybe once or twice I’ve gotten lost in my own home, but come on people, who among us hasn’t lost our way going from the kitchen to the living room?

It has been pointed out (a time or two) that there are devices out there for people with my particular disability and some people have even suggested I look into procuring such an apparatus. With that in mind, I did a bit of research.

There are many wonderful navigational devices available for purchase.

There’s a Garmin hand-held device.

And there’s a Garmin navigational system that is mounted in the car. I see Mr. Garmin was able to locate High Street…



One can purchase a Magellan Road Mate,

or even a TOM TOM GO.

I seriously, and I do mean SERIOUSLY considered purchasing something along these lines or trading in my car for something equipped with Onstar.

However, because I have the world’s most incredible son, I no longer have to worry about getting lost!

Presenting for your viewing pleasure…

Not only can this device be used to take photos and make phone calls, this marvelous invention comes complete with VZ Navigator, including My Places, Local Search, and HELP! The help feature seemed especially appealing to my son. I’m not sure why.

All I have to do is type in (or do a search for) the destination address and this incredible piece of technology plots a course. It warns me when a turn is coming, even telling me what lane to be in! It suggests, in a sweet voice, that I should stay in the right lane and prepare for a right hand turn. A little gauge on the screen indicates how far, in feet, it is to the next turn-off and a large arrow points in the correct direction, just in case I mistake right for left (not that it could happen, this feature is for other folks...yea that’s right).

Anyway, I’ve been to the hospital numerous times. I’ve gone to Walmart, Target, Krogers and several other places in this bustling metropolis and I have yet to get lost to the point that my Navigator Lady can’t direct me home. Sure, there have been times I’ve tried her patience; “Please make the next available legal U-Turn” and “Recalculating Route” seem to be her favorite phrases, but for the most part we get along just fine.

Now if she could just make the traffic go away...

Lewis and Clark, the Lost Episodes, Part XXII.V

My dear son, a.k.a. Help Desk, Tech Support and Mr. Google Earth, tried to put together a Google Map for me to post that showed the path we took trying to find the hospital. He spent quite a bit of time on it and finally threw up his hands in disgust because they would only let him plot out 10 stops. We had many, many, many, many, many, many, many more than that. Hence I will just attempt to explain it to you.

Here's how it went. Kay had been to Children's Hospital several times for varying reasons. I imagine she will mention it on her blog (which you really must check out) some day, so I won't talk about it here. Anyway, she had been to that location many times and thought she had a pretty good idea how to get there.

We drove down um, er, well, "I Don't Know Street" and then turned on to "What the Heck Avenue". We followed that for several miles until we came to "The Street Named after a President". Kay said to turn "right", which I did, however, apparently her right and my right are two different directions, so I had to make the loop around again. I turned left (a.k.a. Kay's right) and we followed "The Street Named after Yet Another President" until we came to…..drum roll please….THE HOSPITAL!

We were home free! We had directions, sent to us by the kind folks at the hospital, which would take us directly to the hotel! I can tell you, we were feeling pretty confident at this point. Giggling and laughing, we said things like "all roads lead to the hotel" and "nothing but net" (I did mention we were exhausted at this point, didn't I?).

We circled the hospital looking for High Street; no success. We tried it from a different direction, still nothing. We went one more time around the hospital and still nada (by that time I was starting to think that whoever put the map together was probably high).

Around and around and around we went, searching "high" and low for High Street. Every time we passed the entrance to the hospital I'd say "Look kids, Big Ben, Parliament", giggling uncontrollably (did I mention that I get extremely silly when I’m tired?). By about the tenth pass I was nearly hysterical, and I'm pretty sure Kay was concerned for my mental health. She kept muttering something about the psych ward...

We finally abandoned the map altogether and (men, cover your eyes and ears here, I don’t want to offend your sensibilities) decided to ask for directions. We saw a very friendly looking woman talking on her cell phone in front of a house a few blocks from Parliament (see, it still cracks me up). She was very friendly and gave us directions to the hotel, which was about 5 miles away. She said to take a right at the next intersection and follow that street to Quebec Street.

Woohoo!! We were “on the road again”.

We took the appropriate turn and started driving. The very nice blonde woman said we couldn’t miss Quebec Street. We drove and we drove and we drove and we….well you get the picture. No Quebec Street. Eventually we came to Lafayette Street and Kay got very excited. “See,” she said, “we are in the French section now, Quebec should be right up here!” I got the giggles again. About 5 miles later, give or take, we abandoned yet another plan.

We finally called the Help Desk (my son) again for assistance. We told him our current location and he mapquested a route to the hotel for us. I was weak from a mixture of laughter and exhaustion, but finally, the Red Lion Central Denver came into view! We rubbed our hands in anticipation. I kept saying over and over, “The Holy Grail is within our grasp.” Kay giggled in delight.

And then the Grail slipped through our fingers. We missed the d&mn turnoff to the hotel and ended up on an off-ramp to I-70!

ARGHHHHHHHHHH!!

I won’t bore you with any more of our lost adventures. To sum it up, we called the boy cousins and they HAD found the hotel and were already settled in. We called my son, yet again, for directions to his house, and he suggested we meet him at his work instead. We (and I know this is going to shock you) missed the turn to his work and called him from a shopping center. Fortunately, he was just getting off of work and met us there. He took us out to dinner at a Chinese Restaurant in the shopping mall. I went to use the rest room, turned the wrong way coming out and ended up in the kitchen.

After dinner, my son had us follow him to his apartment.

Lewis and Clark, the Lost Episodes...

And so the saga continued...

Kay and I went into a gas station to ask the attendant how to get back on track. She told us we could either drive the 80 or so miles back to the Y that I had missed, or take a 2 lane highway from Gillette over to Douglas, Wyoming. We discussed it with the men-folk and chose the 2 lane road because it cut over 100 miles from the trip.

Once again, we took to the road, ladies in the front, boys behind, trying to keep up (did I mention I have a lead foot?).

We passed miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of…..nothing, seeing zilch but flattened rabbits in the road. Kay and I, both animal lovers, were saddened by the carnage, but eventually tiredness and our inevitable silliness took over and we started calling them flat jacks. I know, I know…but to our tired little Norwegian pea brains, it was either laugh or cry about it, so we chose to laugh.

Kay and I giggled and laughed the whole way, so it seemed like only minutes to us, but probably days to the cousins behind us. A short (and I do mean SHORT) cell phone conversation confirmed that the guys wanted to have lunch, so as soon as we reached Douglas, I began looking for a restaurant. And guess what? (I know you are going to be shocked here) I got lost…in Douglas, Wyoming; population 5,288.

Round and round town we went, trying to find a place to eat. We drove down every single street (all five of them) and a couple of alleyways. By the time we found an eatery, Cousin Dale (a.k.a. Leukemia Boy—his words, not mine) had started calling us Lewis and Clark.

We had a quick bite to eat and headed toward Denver.

Really…I promise.

To be continued…

I Must Hurry and Catch Up to Them, For I Am Their Leader

I started to write this Wednesday night. Things have been hectic here, to say the least, so the blog has been put on the back burner. I finally have a few spare minutes to finish it up, but don’t expect too much.

We arrived in Denver without incident, but not for the lack of trying. But was it really without incident? I guess it would depend upon how you define the word. Wiktionary defines it as "a designed, sudden, and unfortunate event", and I can promise you that most of what happened yesterday was not designed. Some of it, however, was sudden and some might even think, unfortunate.

The adventure began at 4:00 am on Wednesday morning, when I staggered crawled out of bed to shower and load the car for the trip to Denver. Despite having gone to bed just a few hours before, I was looking forward to the day because it meant that I would be spending time with two of my favorite people; my cousins Kay (who has just started a blog that you MUST check out) and Dale.

After numerous trips in and out of the house, the car was loaded and I was ready to go. It was 5:00 am. The plan (which had finally been revealed to me around 11 pm the night before) was for me to meet Kay, Dale and Dale's brother Danny in a town around 80 miles from home. From there we would "convoy" to Denver; Dale and Danny in one car and Kay and I in the other.

Since Kay and I been to Denver many times before and neither Danny or Dale had driven the route, it was decided that Kay and I would take the lead and the boys would follow. Danny would do the driving so that Dale could relax in anticipation of his upcoming bone marrow transplant.

Previous posts have made mention of the fact that I am Norwegian. This set of cousins are also Norwegian, and as I told a good friend a few days ago, Norwegians are notoriously directionally impaired. Leif Erickson was looking for the Spice Islands when he discovered America and the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, at least not in this case.

We left Hardin and headed down I-90 toward Buffalo, WY. Kay and I had the music cranked and were talking and laughing. I checked the rear-view mirror frequently to be sure the cousins were behind us. We blazed by Sheridan and headed for Denver.

About an hour later, Kay announced that she needed to “rest”. I called Cousin Danny on the cell and arranged to take a short pit stop and gas up at Casper.

As we neared town, I said, out loud, “Are you sure this is Casper?” Kay assured me that it was. We missed the first couple of exits (don’t ask) and realized we were running out of “town”, so we pulled in to the last exit and headed back towards “Casper”. We fueled and grabbed some coffee and headed back toward the highway.

We hit the off-ramp and headed toward Denver. Or so we thought. The first highway sign we came to said “Moorcroft 15 miles”. Moorcroft I thought to myself. MOORCROFT? My mind reeled. I didn’t remember passing by Moorcroft on my way to Denver in August of ‘06. Was this a new city? Had it sprung up in the months since I’d last traveled to Denver? Obviously I was grasping at mental straws…

With my poor confused cousin Danny following behind, I took the next available exit and headed back the way we came. As we neared the city I spotted a sign that said “Welcome to Gillette”.

YIKES!

Somehow, about a hundred miles back, I had missed a Y in the road. Instead of being close to Colorado, we were actually nearly in South Dakota. For those of you not familiar with the geography of my part of the US…going from Montana to Denver through South Dakota is not a short cut. We were seriously off course.

Kay and Dale and I laughed hysterically, but to put it mildly, Cousin Danny was not amused.

To be continued…

And by the way, today is my one year blogversary. I'd have never imagined, just a year ago, that my little adventure in blogging would give me so much pleasure and introduce me to all of you. I feel truly blessed to be a part of this wonderful community.