Don’t Leave Home Without One

Like Raj on The Big Bang, Monty has a new heartthrob, her name is Siri and thank goodness her sultry voice only resides on the phone.  Siri won’t even talk to me, as confident as I sound when I address her she simply ignores me.   Monty, on the other hand, can ask Siri anything and her silky voice is almost breathless as she answers.   

Soon after Monty got his first I-Phone he formed a  relationship with Siri and I could do nothing but listen in amazement as they flirted with each other.  Really, we were walking around down town in  Missoula, Montana looking for a barber shop.  Monty pulled the phone out of his pocket and asked Siri for directions to the closest barber shop.  Hand to my heart, Siri says, ‘ Ahead one block, but I like your hair just the way it is ‘.  What! I couldn’t believe it.  I suggested Monty shouldn’t keep his phone in his pocket.  But apparently he and Siri are very comfortable with the arrangement.  

Our first ‘mobile’ phone was the cute little flip phone model.  It wasn’t fancy, it made and received calls and that was it.  Sort of what you expected from a phone.   We were traveling a lot during the summers and thought it was important to be able to contact home without trying to find a pay phone.  Actually the service wasn’t that good and when we wanted to call home we searched for a phone booth and use phone cards anyway but, we were proud modern cell phone users. 

When we first started traveling,  people were starting to talk about GPS and how handy it was.  Not to be left behind by our fellow travelers we invested in a gismo to attach to the windshield and yell at us.  We named this annoying, shrill, fish wife, Cleo, after what we assumed might be the name of a  psychic who knew where we were trying to go.  Cleo was nothing like the sultry Siri, Cleo only seemed to complain and sigh when she announced once again, re-calculate.  Monty and Cleo actually came to shouting matches.  He insisting we were not going that way, and she insisting once again we were not her favorites. 

If the only GPS you’ve ever used is asking Siri for directions you have no idea how complicated the first ones were.  Cleo was not easy to get along with, for one thing, she was difficult to program, and the default option for every city was the main post office.  We’ve been to the  post office in more towns than you can imagine.  

I’d like to mention here, at the time, we were driving a big Dodge Dually truck, hauling a 34 foot 5th wheel trailer.   Because we were a big rig we tried to avoid toll roads if possible.  Toll roads charge by the axel and that can add up quickly if you are traveling through the Northeast where there are a lot of toll roads.  

Since Cleo didn’t understand the toll road issues, she always insisted on the most direct route to our next destination .  To circumvent the problem we got in the habit of putting in ‘way points’ ahead  of the final destination.  Of course, you had to be alert because if you didn’t change the ‘way point’ before you reached that destination, you ended up at the post office,  thus the many post offices we have visited.  

We will never forget our experience driving through New Jersey on our way to New Hampshire.  In our quest to avoid toll roads and big cities we were using the ‘way point’ method, selecting the roads less traveled.  Our intent was to pass by Princeton, NJ and continue to the next ‘way point’.  We were driving along enjoying the scenery when Cleo announced we should bear right, instead of another argument we did as she instructed and drove directly through the gates of Princeton University.   I was shouting, ‘OMG, wait, stop, no, go back,’ while Monty was shouting something like ‘Holy Shit’, and there we are pulling through the gates of one of the top Ivy League Universities.  In 1746 the founding fathers established this University  and if they could see us pulling through their beloved gates they would roll over in their graves.  Fortunately they have a really tall gate and we didn’t take it down and managed to squeeze through the centuries old pillars.  

Princeton is a beautiful campus with huge trees arching over winding roadways, green lawns everywhere and glorious old stone buildings. The founding fathers laid it out nicely for their horse and buggies not for  RV’s of today.  We didn’t get to enjoy the atmosphere because we were in a panic to find a way out.   We were driving slowly looking for some kind of sign that would offer directions to an exit.  All we saw were streets marked ‘No Outlet’ with a cross street marked ‘One Way ‘ then there were a multitude of cul-de-sacs with ‘No Turn Around’ signs.  The campus was crowded with students changing classes and studious looking professors with their noses in a book.  Some of the people were giving us strange looks and some were even pointing at us with shaking heads.    Yes, we know, we’ve really screwed up, it was Cleo’s fault, she was probably taking us to the damn campus post office.  We had no idea what to do but continue to drive slowly and wave to the nice folks, all the while Cleo is shrieking ‘Turn left, on to a street apparently named ‘Deliveries Only.’ recalculating, make a U Turn,’ ARE YOU KIDDING!

Monty said if we hit a dead end or got stuck he was just going to abandon the rig and walk away.  It looked like a very real possibility, the streets were so narrow we had to drive down the middle with cars moving out of our way.  At the corner of ‘Do Not Enter’ and ‘Wrong Way’ we found some hope. We finally saw what looked like an exit off of the main campus. It required a  very tight left turn with cars parked on both sides of the street.  Traffic coming toward us looked up and started backing up to give us a chance to make the turn.  I don’t know how we managed to clear the intersection but we did and made our way slowly toward the exit.   

The folks on campus are probably still talking about the idiots from Arizona cruising through the campus like they wanted to buy the place.  They might have said something like those folks aren’t smart enough to go to school here, but that would be have been unkind.  Honest it was Cleo’s fault. 

 Our former relationship with Cleo was strained at best, and now we were totally fed up with her. We were convinced she was a demon in disguise.  We pulled her off the windshield and tossed her in the back seat.  We made it to New Hampshire without her and didn’t miss her one bit.  Well, there was the toll road through New York that cost us $35 but we were way past caring.