Death by GPS

 Tahoe is all snowed in and a bunch of freeways are closed. I've been on twitter a lot because it's that dead week at work between Christmas and New Year's and I usually choose not to take vacation. I remember in the early days of Heckasac Smiller would despair because there was no one online and he was the only one working. At my prior job my boss would give me the time off and not make me use vacation, that was pretty cool!

Back to my point about Twitter, I am seeing a lot of snarky traffic posts about trying to drive in the snow, including like from the CHP. It's a bit jarring to see the jokey tone from CalTrans and cops, but I guess it's a Twitter thing. One person tweeted about how Google Maps was showing people alternative routes that would cause them to get stuck in the snow.

This got me thinking about a time many years ago (how many? no idea - ten? more? aha, I checked my email and it was 2009, so 12 it figures I would guess ten because of how the pandemic made the last two years simultaneously long and also meaningless) when GPS almost got me and my friend JM killed.

We were heading to a ghost town in Nevada, no, not the one I've been to a few times that many people go to, but some other one. I have never been to this day so I can't tell you what it was called. We must have been using some first gen GPS I'm guessing, like a Tom Tom. My mom still uses my old Tom Tom when she's in the states, although since that's been two years as well I'm wondering if it will work if she can ever come visit again. She was supposed to visit in about 3 weeks but ya know, Omicron.

We set off, probably without maps and followed the GPS. After hours we ended up on dirt roads, and finally gave up when it was sending us dirt roads that were too narrow to turn around, with big deep ruts on both sides. They were obviously not for cars, maybe for ATVs or I don't know, 1800s cattle drives? I remember at one point getting out of the car to direct her and because I was getting to scared to be in the car which I though might fall off the road (I am notorious for being like a rat fleeing a sinking ship, I will abandon you and get myself to safety)

I don't know how long this went on (sorry, my memory is too bad for my stories to be great) and then we drove back into some town and asked them. Maybe it was the town museum. We told them the name of the ghost town (I swear it maybe had the word green in the name) and I think they gave us another pointer, but we either tried it and it looked sketch or we just were too tired to try.

At this point we decided to give up and drive home, our friends were in a ghost town and everyone had flip phones so there was no way they would get reception. I remembered the Four Eyes were playing in Nevada City, which was on our way home. I think it was at the Mineshaft. I think smiller was there? My friend JM was beat but he dropped me off so as a bonus to my 12 hour day stressed in the car I got to see my friends/great band.

addendum: I blogged about this in May 2009, made an obscure joke about deciding not to camp (not sure why I didn't say we got lost) and the show was actually in Placerville! And there are also pics from Biz's graduation https://heckasac.blogspot.com/2009/05/friday-cruise.html