If Matthew and I had trusted ours when we were travelling down the R24 at 120kmp/h, I wouldn’t be writing to you now!!
We were up in Johannesburg, had really battled with the incredible heat and got lost more than is normal for two intelligent human beings.
Sad, considering I lived there for eight years and, as stated at the outset, we had the ‘assistance’ of two highly evolved smartphones!
Not sure if the satellite bouncing the signals to our phones had a grudge against us for some terrible transgression we’d committed, but it simply did not matter how closely we followed the instructions fed to us by these electronic marvels, we got lost day after day.
Now I understand that as a woman, I’m purported to have a poor sense of direction, (unfortunately I’m letting my gender down here cos it’s true)! But Matthew is quite obviously not a woman and yet his ‘Y’ chromosome was no match for the dogged determination of our phones. They managed on more than one occasion to keep us driving in circles, waving hello to a particular fast food joint more than four times before we located our destination. And that’s only in one instance!
Luckily we both have a pretty well-developed sense of humour when it comes to the absurd, but even this was sorely tested on our drive back to the airport.
With little confidence, we duly set the GPS on both of our phones and sat them side by side on the centre console. We then proceeded to disregard their advice and follow the signs.
And boy, were we ever right to have no faith in our devices.
The final straw came when we were in the fast lane on the rather busy R24 and Matt’s phone piped up, emphatically insisting that we were to make a right turn – there and then! Mine however, did not agree with his – no, mine told us to make a U-turn within the next 100 metres. And the ladies trapped inside continued to burble instructions – all in calm authoritative voices telling us we had missed our chance and were now headed for goodness knows where.
Their contradicting instructions brought to mind the song ‘Duelling Banjos’ only substitute banjos for cellphones!
As you can imagine, this cracked us up and Matt did a remarkable job of getting us to the airport laughing so hard I suspect there were tears running down his face. (I can’t be sure cos I couldn’t see through the tears pouring down mine!)
So, I ask you once more – do you trust your GPS?
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