Jack and Jill = GPS

Bill has a Garmin. He LOVES his Garmin, and he calls her Jill. How original! That’s the name that is on the US Women’s voice that comes with the machine!! Me, I call her SYBIL!! She’s not my favorite device, and I’ve threatened more than once to toss her out the window. On one occasion I really MEANT IT!! Her voice just gets on my nerves! Not only that, she’s nasty!

I will admit to using Sybil on a few trips. I will also admit that she has gotten me where I needed to go, even if it wasn’t the most logic route. So, when I headed up to Eau Claire, WI last weekend I took her along. Actually, she was along, but I changed her name to “Jack”, which is the US male voice. I was hoping he would be smarter than Jill.

Jack and Jill are not flexible when it comes to traveling to Eau Claire. I should point out here that there is NOT a good way to get to Eau Claire from Eastern Iowa. GPS always want to take you through Dubuque. If you don’t want to go that way, you have to ‘trick’ it. How insane does one have to be to have to “Trick” a GPS device! Seriously, print out your directions on a piece of paper and be done with it!! Oh no, we LOVE our technology!!

The way I wanted to go involved heading North to 63, toward Rochester, and then taking 90 across the river to WI. Once I got to Spring Valley, MN, Jack gave up and showed me the proper route to get to Eau Claire. Way to go JACK!!

I thought I would be really smart and mark the location of Spring Valley, MN on the GSP so that when it came time to go home I could once again, ‘trick’ it into taking me back to Spring Valley and home. It sure sounded like a good idea to me!!! It didn’t work out that way.

I can truly say that the 4 or so times I’ve been up to Ann’s since we gotten Seeker, I’ve never come home the same way. One time Bill went with me and we were heading home in the dark, on two lane highways dodging horse draw Amish buggies! That was so NOT GOOD! Thanks JILL!! Um, I mean Sybil! Another time we thought we’d go ahead and take the LaCrosse/Dubuque way home and stopped to visit Carrie and Michele at the hotel to see how the agility trial was. I thought that way seemed longer than the 63 route, but it’s hard to tell.

I should have realized I was in trouble when Jack couldn’t find the Days Inn I was to stay at Friday night. In fact, Jack didn’t know $^*!. The address was correct, and he ‘thought’ he knew what he was talking about, but he took me to an empty lot.

The only good thing was it was right next to a nice new Menard’s!! I called home, thank goodness for tracphones, and Bill helped me find the hotel. I marked the location so Jack could find it the following evening.

Sunday afternoon I was all ready to head home. I plugged in Jack and sent him to Spring Valley. Sounds easy enough? Right? Nope, he wanted me to go a different route than I’d come up on. What the heck!! I had a general idea of the first 3 highways I needed, all 2 lane, but after that I wasn’t sure. So, I called home. I TRIED to call home!! Call Failed! Gee, what if this was a real emergency??? I still ended up getting “lost” around 52 and 63, but finally ended up where I needed to be. Jack kept trying to move me over to 218, so I just ‘shut his hole’. Yep, OFF buttons are AWESOME!

Bill pointed out that he’d send me off with directions on how to get there, how to find the hotel and how to get home. All I had to do was look at them. Gosh…..that sounds an awful lot like Effingham!! I wonder if Jack or Jill would have saved Martha and I on that trip?