Not From Around Here

The iPhone navi app is not designed for the ADD driver, or any driver, really, especially while traveling through an area with unreliable internet connection, like the Catskill Mountains.

You’d think my memory would serve me well here and I’d know which way to go since I lived in the Catskills for eight years. But I never had much of an internal GPS to begin with and either everything looks familiar or it all looks like I’m lost. And when I say it looks familiar, I’m going solely on my ancient memory of the towns against which my high school’s soccer or basketball or softball teams played.

As I’m driving without bars from my sister’s house in Cairo to a party in Margaretville, New York, I’m basing how close I am to my hometown of Margaretville by my recollection of how long the bus ride felt to and from these games. A bus ride that took place 30 years ago.

So when, at the T in the road where I took a left instead of a right, and I saw a sign for Stamford instead of Grand Gorge, immediately I recalled data in a much more reliable way than my iPhone app could. My iPhone navi has no memory for away games at Stamford being a much longer bus ride than away games at Grand Gorge, and therefore I should turn around. But I do. I should have taken a right back there at the T in the road instead of a left. The navi completely failed to mention the T.

Every time I went the wrong way, my self-talk while I got myself back on the right track, was “Well, at least I’m driving the Fit and not wasting as much gas as the Odyssey would burn up.” However, the Odyssey has built-in navi that runs on satellite. It always works, no matter what remote, bar none, connection deprived, no-internet-yet, still playing our 8-tracks, town I’m in.

Fortunately, if you get lost in the Catskills and your navi is unreliable, you can either pull over and ask directions from someone, like one of these Jersey girls, or you can drive to the top of the nearest ski center, while chanting please, please, please, please, please to the little icon showing you how many bars you don’t have.

I did both. The chanting was very helpful. The Jerseys, not so much. They just stared at me with that “You’re not from around here, are you?” look. The tell was when I couldn’t stop gawking at the flies buzzing around their heads and their unevenly filled utters. That was a little off-putting. Where are the farmers? Isn’t it time to milk these girls? I felt bad, really, for staring, the way you feel bad about staring at a birth defect and, no matter how hard you try, you can’t look away.  “No, Jersey girls. I’m not from around here,” I reply. “Can you tell me where the nearest ski center is?”

I wasn’t sure how good their vision was through their uneven eyes. I hoped that they couldn’t see me recoil in disgust when the flies buzzed all around their heads and huddled on their eyelids. I tried not to judge but….they’re nothing like the milk carton cow models. Or have I been gone from farm country so long…No. I know what this is!

And this is where I go into conspiracy theory. These cows are tragically altered by all the growth hormones and antibiotics and genetically modified grain they’ve been fed. Look at them!

I start to hear the music to the Twilight Zone playing in my head, so I run back inside my car and shut the door quickly behind me before any flies get in and bite me and then I mutate and show up at this party with four utters of unequal size and shape.

And there you have it. The iPhone navi app purposely withholds information for the excitement it derides from watching me drive the wrong way and wind up on a desolate country road with mutant Jersey girls giving me attitude.

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