Recalculating & a Little Mayhem

Not much of an adventurer, I haven’t driven north of Dayton, Ohio via Interstate 75 in many years. Anytime some obligation forces us to travel that direction, it makes more sense to bypass the city.

Yesterday, however, was a different story as SO and I took a little road trip to buy cat litter. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, surely we could get non-clumping Tidy Cats almost anywhere.

But we save money buying huge bags at a members-only warehouse club store. Ordering and paying online means a quick trip with easy pickup, too. I don’t even have to get out of the car until the bags are wheeled over for me to load. (SO has a bad back) Alas, our local Sam’s Club didn’t have the litter in stock, or so the website indicated. Had I known this right away, my suggestion would have been to try the local sister store, Walmart.

Without consulting me, my dear partner went ahead and ordered from another Sam’s Club. Told this one was in Fairborn, I decided to make lemonade out of lemons, proposing lunch at a rather interesting place we visited many months ago after visiting the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum. Not a chain restaurant, a nice change of pace, the Wandering Griffin is also a microbrewery.

Fortunately, I talked him into both shopping ahead of eating and firing up the navigation system before I backed out of the driveway. As it turned out, my plan to traverse the usual route around the city would have taken us far out of our way, as would dining in Fairborn.

It was interesting to see parts of Old North Dayton again, if only from the freeway. Little had changed that I could tell except for one important thing, the very Interstate, a long construction project making the road a bit safer.

At least I extracted a promise to dine at an old downtown favorite called Thai 9 in the historic Oregon District. Requested super spicy, their massaman curry with tofu is wonderful. SO appreciates the sushi menu. Heading south after a long wait at the understaffed Sam’s Club, I once again engaged the nav system.

That turned out to be a mistake. One thing wise engineers changed was moving the Third Street ramp from a left lane exit to the more logical right hand side. I almost missed it, our map system out of date.

Oops. Oh, well. It’s not the first time we have been mislead. One time our old portable Magellan told us we’d reached our destination when I pulled into a cemetery instead of our Indianapolis motel. I am happy to say we made our way to the Marilyn Manson concert okay that night; we just couldn’t find our car afterward.

Hey, it wasn’t our fault the venue directors herded everyone out of one entrance, confusing our sense of direction. We walked the huge lot for at least two hours before someone with a golf cart rounded up us and some other unfortunates. Apparently, folks getting lost happened on a regular basis there. I wonder if they have since changed their silly practice?

Yesterday I saw the exit sign in time and safely changed lanes. Perhaps we should have used his smart phone for the hour round trip. Either way, I am grateful for GPS.

Have you ever wandered around lost for hours at a time?

-