Trip to Alpharetta - Part 1

so today, I left for Atlanta, leaving the Queen and the princesses to fend for themselves for three days, and it was a parting that left us all on the verge of tears. You see, as I've said, we've rarely parted, so this is something fairly new for us all. The plan was to make it as easy as possible on the princesses, so we decided it was best to have them drop me off and then pick me up at the same place on Wednesday. That gives them a sense of open and shut when it comes to my going.


I have quite a few movies on my iPod, so I had plenty to watch while I waited in the airplane terminal after saying good bye to them at length. I managed to watch one movie during the length of my waiting in the terminal, in flight, and then waiting at the other end for my ride, which is a while other story altogether.

I rode with one of the other people on the committee, and in my humble opinion, she drove a little on the crazy side, but it wasn't all her fault. You see, we got one of those GPS direction devices that lets you know where you are and gives you directions to where you're going. The deal with these is that they aren't always entirely accurate.

It started when we were just leaving the temrinal and got the verbal instructions to veer to the left at the fork. Or at least I could swear that's what it said. I do admit that at the time, I was just getting used to its instructions. Well, actually, it has the voice of a woman and the woman who was driving said people usually give these trackers names of ex's because they are demanding and even temperamental. It was a Magellan brand, so I just call it Maggie.

Turns out at that fork in the road, we should have gone right instead of left, so Maggie reconfigured the route to take into account going the wrong way. We got to figuring out the directions pretty well after that, so we we thought we getting good when Maggie declared that in 2 miles, we should stay to the right on I-75. No problem.

A little later, Maggie said keep to the right on I-75 in half a mile. Still, no problem. So we approach the fork where one way goes on I-75, and the other goes on US-85. Suddenly, Maggie says to stay left onto US-85. Well, that was too late, and we went onto I-75, leaving Maggie to reconfigure the route again.

Once we got turned back around, the rest of the trip went without much of an incident until we got into Alpharetta. There, I noticed that the route looked like it was turning around on one road. After a quick check, I noticed the route ran down a road and right back after hitting the end. I told her to go straight, and all was well.

We hit our first address, and found out she'd given me the wrong address. D'oh... I told her about the address on the itenerary, and she remembered that address as being the correct one. So we went to our second destination, and got there only an hour late. Yay for us.

The meeting parts were ok. It was interesting to see some of these people face to face, but I'm not sure it was worth the time away and all.

The rest of the day was uneventful. However, lunch and dinner were both covered, so that was a big bonus. I did discover that the USB cable I brought to charge my cell phone didn't work for recharging my cell phone, so I figure I'd ask the guy who was giving me a ride here tomorrow morning. I thought I'd just call him at 7:15 or so before he left his hotel, since the plan was that he'd pick me up at 7:30. All the same, I will turn off my cell phone to preserve what battery I have left since I'm in the yellow after so much use today.