You know that old chestnut about how women can’t read maps? Well it’s not true. I can read maps as well as any man. Sure I might have to turn it round to the same direction that we’re heading in, but I can still get from point A to B using a map. My only problem is that it’s pretty hard to read a map and drive at the same time.
Take the other day when she was trying to steer me into a four lane construction site. It wasn’t road works, no this was a potential tunnel. It was never going to be a road again. So I turned the car around and headed away from the scary bulldozers.
“Perform an immediate U turn,” Navwoman commanded.
“Can’t get through that way anymore,” I told it. (Yes I know it’s stupid to talk to the Navwoman, but I’ve come to think of her as a confidante, maybe even a friend.)
“Perform an immediate U turn,” she said, ignoring me completely, and then again “Perform an immediate U turn.”
Wow, I’d never seen this side of Navwoman. I ignored her and drove on and then she came out with “in 20 metres take the next left”. Just like that. No I’m sorry, you were right, I was trying to steer you to certain death at the hands of a steamroller, nothing. Just the next instruction. Gosh I found that annoying. Not even a note of chagrin there.
But at least I was better off than the Korean tourists who were well and truly led astray by their GPS device. On a road trip from Brisbane to Rockhampton, they ended up bogged in a creek bed. Now I know that many people who aren’t Australian think that we’re all dirt road and red dust here in Queensland, but not so. Having travelled the Brisbane to Rockhampton road on many an occasion I can tell you that it’s all bitumen.
Anyway the rogue GPS led our literal, yet intrepid Korean tourists down gravel roads, then dirt roads, opening locked gates, moving bolder and ignoring danger, no entry signs. Who knows it might have been a feral GPS that was just plain evil, just like the bad robot that Will Smith brought down in I Robot. There’s a new movie idea, rogue GPS system lures tourists into Australia’s bushland where a bunyip eats them.
Google maps used to have a really cool feature that directed you to use a kayak to row to any overseas country. They don’t do that anymore. It’s a shame because it was really funny. Kayak 500km it used to say. I suppose they had to get rid of it when they realised how many literal people there are out there. Gosh if Korean tourists had problems with a land locked GPS imagine what fun that Google map feature would have been. They’d have probably found them floating on an esky lid in the Pacific Ocean.
Anyway the Korean tourists are safe and well. I hear they are still waiting for an apology from their GPS. Image
Loaded Web Australia