Yesterday Rod had a full day at school, and I had my usual Tuesday RDNS appointment. I drove him to TAFE, and walked over to the hospital to see the nurse and get my dressing changed. After, I had a walk around Colonnades and then went home. This is more or less the way Tuesdays go these days. I spent the afternoon looking for Drupal themes that would fit for one of the sites I'm working on, and then installed Drupal locally (the one I've been setting up is on another server) so I could check it out from the very start. All went well. No problems. Rather incredibly easy install. Was just having a look around the new installation when Rod came home from school.
"Hey you feel like going out for a drive", he asks. "Richard over at "XY Blah" (yes I made that up) has a problem with his computer and we need to go see if we can fix it." Mmm, I remember going to XY Blah's last year while Rod set up their computers and network. I spent the afternoon wandering around town, wishing I'd had a camera with me, and had beers at the little town's three pubs while doing sudoku puzzles. I made comment to Rod that I couldn't think of how to get there, but what I didn't say was I was thinking that 'I know we have to go through Meadows, but can't remember anything after that'.
So we hop in the car, and as I'm driving up to the traffic light on our road, Rod tells me that Google maps says I can either get on South Rd and stay on it or I can get on the expressway and then get on the South Rd and stay on it. I opt for the expressway as it will save us going through several traffic lights. It's just after 6pm, so either way was heavy traffic. I thought to myself that you don't get to Meadows from the South Rd, but didn't speak up. Rod was confident, he'd looked it up on Google maps, so fair enough.
Once back on the South Rd, after we passed through several small towns, traffic eased up and driving would have been a bit easier if it weren't for the the winding and hilly roads. Going through Myponga, I pulled the car off the road so I could have a small break as I was getting rather white-knuckled which with arthritis isn't a nice thing. We get to Yankalilla, and it looks nothing like what we both knew it 'should' look like. We drove on to Normanville, and I pulled off into the parking lot for the hotel, which seemed to be the only place in town open. Rod noted the time on my time sheet for driving (as a 'Learner' driver, I have to use a log book and accumulate driving time), and we'd been on the road for an hour. I was tired. We have some old map books in the car so we each had one, and I found things that looked familiar, such as Richard lives on Venerable Rd which happens to be in Maccelsfield - a long, long way from where we were, in the opposite direction. (Rod had been certain he lived in Yankalilla).
So the next obvious question was, OK, so if he isn't in Yankalilla, where does Richard live? Rod tried to ring him on the mobile but there wasn't an answer. We went into the hotel and asked for a phone book - first Rod looked in the yellow pages (a separate book), and then the local (not Adelaide) white pages and nothing. So we went outside to regroup and I rang Vicki on her mobile but got her voicemail, so next I tried another friend, knowing that they are computer people so they'd be able to look up what we needed to know. Just my luck, they aren't home, but Kirstie says she'll look it up in the phone book for me and txt me back the answer. While waiting, I thought I'd fix Vicki's home phone in my phone since it's had the wrong info in it (an extra digit) for ages now, and if she's home, she knows how to search for stuff online. Joy, it worked and she was home. I asked her to look up the same info, and I also further explained that about the fact we were in Normanville, and I was pretty sure we need to be in Macclesfield. I got off the phone with her (same deal, she'd txt me back as soon as she had the info), and Kirstie rang. The address she gave me was correct - but it was XY Blah's address from a year ago before they moved. Rod went back inside to see if he could look something else up in the phone book, and while he was away, the txt from Vicki came in, which started with an LOL (shorthand for 'Laughing Out Loud'), and the address was ... Macclesfield. I was right.
I got in the passenger side and told Rod he was driving for a bit and I'd probably have another stint maybe on the way home. "OK, but you're the navigator." Fine. I grabbed the good map book (one of them has missing pages - and the missing ones happened to be what we needed), and using the 'flash' from my phone camera (the light stays on rather than flashing), attempted find where we were, and where we needed to go, and how to get there, all while Rod's driving, going back the way we came. As you may recall, 'back the way we came' is very winding, twisting, and hilly. In the last few years, I've learned that I can't try to read something when on roads that have lots of curves. Especially on an empty stomach, which by this point it was long after we should have had our tea. I'd checked my readings while waiting for Vicki or Kirstie to get back to me, and it was at 4.9 -- which isn't too low, but much lower and there'd be a problem. Well, with the motion sickness I suddenly had, my sugar levels dropped, and I was suddenly hot, nauseous and if I wasn't incredibly pale, the only other colour I could be was green. I rolled down the window (it was quite chilly out) and practically did the dog thing with nearly sticking my head out the window. Rod asked a few times if I was OK and if I wanted him to stop the car. I told him I'd BE ok as I knew that was true, and no, to keep going. Stopping would only put off what I needed - a meal.
We finally got to Mt Compass, which wasn't really even half way to where we needed to be, but it was the first town with anything open - the pub. I sat outside at their picnic tables and did my best to regroup myself. I just felt so... green. Ugh. The pub had counter meals, but their kitchen was closed (it was now after 8pm). Fortunately here in Australia, most pubs will have toasted sandwiches available anytime, usually at quite reasonable prices. It's not much, but so better than having an empty stomach. We each had a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and diet coke. By time I finished half of mine, my colour was coming back and so was I. Phew.
Back on the road again, I still felt a bit off, but it was better than I had been feeling. We went in search of Strathalbyn Rd, found it, and after awhile reached it and stopped at the (thankfully open) petrol station where we had to fill up the tank and I bought a sausage roll. The sausage roll helped tremendously and made all the difference in the world for me as far as the motion sickness went (it was totally gone), and we were off again. We saw a sign that pointed down a road saying 'Macclesfield 9', so we turned on it. Idiots. The road turned into a dirt road, and we really got quite lost in the middle of NO WHERE, at night. Luckily the road we were on was actually on the map, and weirder yet, I'd been on a before a few years ago when a friend and I went to a conference in Mt Barker. We followed the map to get to a main road and ... we were back on the same road we'd been on before we turned off, only further down it.
We did end up eventually getting to Richard's place, at about 10:30pm. Rod had told him we'd be there by about 7:30pm. Talk about late. So we fixed his computer booting problem, ran a spybot check (or two, since Rod hit the wrong button and closed the program after it'd finished the first time around), and at 5 minutes to midnight were back on the road again... well, the RIGHT road this time, the one that goes through Meadows and isn't quite so twisty. Only problem was that by this time it was foggy. Not just a little, but VERY foggy. No, I wasn't driving, I let Rod take this stint too. I know my limitations. We were home just a bit after 1am.
Lesson learned: Make sure to have snacks on hand. Speak up when something doesn't sound right. And sadly (for Rod), contrary to what he's trained me to believe, he really isn't right all of the time. And when that happens, I must write about it, because it sure isn't an every day occurrence! Nah Nah, I was right. :-) I can't gloat too much though. I really should have spoke up much earlier - like before we left home would have been good, when we could have looked things up before going to the end of the Fleurieu Peninsula only to find out we should have been in the foothills of Mt Barker (you really can't get much more opposite than that!)
I'm including a link to a Google map I customised to show our misadventure. Here's the link:
Going in a BIG circle.
[Edit] ... On looking at the map, it proves a few things.
- GPS Navigation would be handy thing to have, indeed.
- The going around in circles thing shows what can happen when you're looking at a map page in a book and don't have the 'whole picture'. If I'd of seen (or known) that we could have gone straight back up to Willunga, then to Meadows, and then to Macclesfield, it would have made our trip a LOT shorter.
- Even this map doesn't show the getting lost on a dirt road part of our adventure.
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