The Garmin may not be your friend

All the inhabitants of Beach House 2009 met up in front of McDM's house by 10 AM Saturday. McDM had a magical little dashboard navigator and he was going to drive the lead wagon in our train. We also decided that the other drivers needed some kind of direction just in case we got separated or lost cell phone contact. So we copied down the directions Map Quest spit out. I kinda despise MapQuest, but didn't have time to argue, because we needed to get on the road. Usually I like to have a map unfolded on the dashboard in front of Keith and make him navigate (which he hates), so I thought I'd avoid that unpleasantness and just follow the route someone else picked this time.

By the time we got on I68, McDM's Dashboard Navigator was telling him to go a different way than MapQuest had told the rest of us, and so we folded our hand-written directions and put them away under the sun visor. This was fine and dandy with me, and the first hundred miles passed without incident. Then we stopped to pee and switch out drivers.

Then, unfortunately, and because I accepted someone else's dictation of the route without checking myself, Keith was driving when we hit the DC area. F-word. MapQuest hadn't suggested we take the Beltway, but McDM's Garmin did.

I love my husband, and I think he is a very good driver. But he was so personally insulted by the existence of traffic and other driver's habits (no one uses turn signals, people merge in and out of traffic rather abruptly, no one uses turn signals) that his bad waves filled the car with noxious hate. And then he turned his hate vision on me when I suggested he relax, so I just shut my mouth and worked on my knitting till it was my turn to drive.

We got lost from the wagon train about 200 miles into the trip. This freed me to drive at whatever speed I preferred, and I took full advantage. I LOVE driving 80 mph in and out of 5 lanes of crazy traffic! As I have said before, I drive a TURBO, baby! Keith went to sleep out of self preservation. Eventually the others caught up with us in the 4 mph traffic que heading under the bay. And within half an hour we were safely ensconced in our luxurious beach house, and in another half an hour we were on the beach in the dark. Oh Gods, how awesome. The vast empty expanse of sand, and to top it off, THE OCEAN WAS RIGHT THERE TOO.