“Hey Siri! Where The Heck Are We?”

Here’s a friendly reminder to all of you travelers: your GPS routing system is only as good as the information you put in it. Simply put, if you type in the wrong address, it’s going to take you to the wrong place, not the one you wanted to go.  If there’s not a chapter about this in the book called Traveling For Dummies, there should be. 

What the book probably wouldn’t include is this:  if your wife is in charge of putting the address in the Google Maps app; and more importantly, if she’s using the “talk to text” feature on her iPhone, you should double check her. I didn’t. And that my friends, is how the address to Walt Disney World, which was supposed to be Maingate Lane, mistakenly became Marianne Lane on her GPS.  

Let me elaborate. After about a 10 hour drive, we were on the outskirts of Orlando, so I asked Carol to put in the final directions to the land of the mouse. Great!  The GPS told us we were only 45 minutes away. It had been a long drive, we were tired and ready to call it a day.  However, as we got closer to our destination, I begin to wonder how we were being routed to Disney World.  You see, the exit we took off of the freeway did not look like the land of green grass and sunshine. I didn’t even see an orange tree.  What we did see was urban blight, which got worse with each passing block. There were liquor stores, pawnshops, and quite a few boarded up places. I thought I saw the chalk outline of a body.  When I asked  Carol about our location, she assured me it was the correct address. “Well, maybe it’s Disney’s way of helping to revitalize a depressed area,” I thought. 

Soon, Google Maps directed me to turn. “Thank the Lord,”  I thought. We were finally leaving this abyss - except we weren't. We drove another half mile thru more squalor until we were told to take the next right turn and arrive at our destination. I complied, although by now I smelled a rat, not a mouse.  Carol, looking around moon-eyed, had a change of attitude, declaring, “I’m not getting out of this car.” That’s because we weren’t at Disney, or our hotel. Oh no. Marianne Lane was the entrance to a trailer park. Google Maps had routed us into a trailer park.  I thought I heard Siri say, “Let’s get outta here.”

It only took me a few seconds to determined what had happened.  Sometimes I’ll use the talk to text feature, so I knew it was capable of mistakes; however, never, would I ever use it to put an address into a GPS without double checking it.  And Carol didn’t. That’s how we ended up at the gate of a trailer park in the ‘hood. Still, I needed my pound of flesh, so I feinted ignorance, and said, “Gee, what could have possibly gone wrong?  Hey, why don’t you double check Google Maps?”

She cross-checked the address with the one my son gave her.  

“Uh Oh!,” she said. 

“You put it in wrong didn’t you?”

She stammered as she tried to come up with an excuse. “Well yeah, but….”

“No buts!  Give me that!   Unless you want to stay here and ride Crack Mountain or Drug Lords of the Caribbean.”

I grabbed the phone, and saw it for myself. The message from my son said Maingate Lane. And when I toggled to Google Maps - Marianne Lane.  

Once I made the correction, I discovered that we were still 35 minutes from our destination. Ugh. Not what I wanted to see on a dark, rainy evening after 10 hours on the road. 

We drove in silence, except for the monotone voice of the GPS directing us to our correct destination, Maingate Lane. This time, when we exited the freeway, there were palm trees and neat strip centers with colorful neon lights. I pointed out that not one of the stores had boarded up windows.  We pulled into a Mexican restaurant, not because I wanted Tex-Mex food, but because I knew they would have margaritas. I needed one. 

Note to self: next time, fly to Orlando.