My not so hidden talent

It’s great that I can do something really well but sometimes I wish that my talent lay elsewhere. Unfortunately for me, my talent is the ability to get lost. Let me give you today’s example which highlights just how talented I am.

The kids and I were travelling home after visiting family interstate.  I figured that buying petrol would be a great thing to do before I got on a motorway or an expressway or any kind of road that you can’t get off for a long way.  So we stopped, I bought petrol and some snacks for the trip home and we proceeded on our merry way. Now at some point not too long after that I saw a sign for the road I needed to be get on to head home. I was over a lane too far and so I missed the turn.

No problem I thought, just get Boy Child to start the map app on my phone and it will show us how to get back to the road we needed to be on. He started the app and I was following along the directions and thinking umm this doesn’t look familiar anymore. Now bear in mind I do this same trip at least 3 times a year so I should have recognised something. But I didn’t and that concerned me.  Plus the little voice on the machine hadn’t spoken for a while so I wondered if it had turned it off somehow and I’d missed another turn. Nope, it was just in Sydney traffic half of 12kms it wanted us to go had taken about 20 minutes. The time it was going to take to get home had increased significantly as well. Weird, I thought. We should have been on the tollway ages ago. Something was very, very wrong.

Sydney map from http://www.living-in-sydney.com/sydney-suburb-map.html

It turned out when Boy Child turned the app on he selected the route without tolls.  So we heading home via the non toll route which (according to the GPS) was apparently still 3 hours 22 minutes away. Given we had already been driving for an hour and a quarter by then I was a little upset.  I stopped at the next service station we came to and I left the car for a little while to pace a little and generally calm down.

About 5 minutes of deep breathing helped and so I returned to the car and we set off again. Our trip home ended up being about five hours instead of the typical three and a half. On the plus side we had an adventure and we arrived safe and sound just significantly later than planned. This is not the only instance we I have gotten us geographically misplaced. I have often managed to take several different ways to get to my grandmothers (which has added an extra five to ten minutes) but have done okay with that the last few times.  Of course there was also the time I got very lost while visiting my sister near the gold coast a few years ago. which my family hasn’t let me forget. However, I think today’s trip  has outdone all the other times put together.  I’m glad I’m not planning anymore trips away for a while.