Lost

Technically, I have never been lost. I consider being lost to be without hope of finding your way, like the Donner party.  Close to being lost is when you have to ask someone for directions. I have been close to being lost several times. I am still alive, living in the same country, and have not eaten anyone. Therefore I have not been lost!

 I have, on occasion, been directionally challenged. There were circumstances where I needed to change the direction of travel in order to shorten the distance to my destination rather than taking the circumnavigation of the globe route; like the Garmin lady, I often am “recalculating”

My theory is that we are descended from pioneers heading for California or Oregon. They were so directionally impaired that they thought they had arrived at the Promised Land when they stopped in Illinois for a “bathroom” break. Asking the local natives for their location, they were told the native word for “I don’t know”. 

It went something like this:

Ancestors “Where the f**k are we?”

Native Illinois Americans  (thinking the pioneers were asking about the Fukarwee tribe) responded “California” which means “I don’t know”.

Why else would anyone choose to live in Illinois, land of wind, ice, high humidity, and mosquitoes? Lost ancestors has to be the excuse. The “Not lost, just changing direction” gene was passed down to each of us native Illinoisans through our mixture of mostly recessive genes.

The “Principals of Fishing and Boating” have varying degrees of directional impairment. None of us takes the direct route to a place. Robert is famous for his “no interstates” travels. He once traveled to Bermuda (you know the island) by driving. Given the need to arrive with Robert driving, you will take multiple country roads, several side streets, and an occasional corn field. You will arrive safely, but will have no clue how you got there.

One of  Robert’s routes.😈

Don couldn’t find his way across the street. The first time Don and I traveled together, we failed to find Chicago O’Hare field and drove on towards Wisconsin. You may have heard of O’Hare, the largest airport in the nation. It was only through a casual observation I made about the diminishing number of planes in the sky that Don actually looked at the highway signs and determined we were heading to Wisconsin and well past the airport.

Don and I have missed more turns than a drunken Monopoly player. We are particularly bad at driving on cross country fishing trips. We drove around the town of Lake City (population 100) for about 15 minutes looking for the lake. (There is no lake in Lake City). We did ask directions on this trip, just not in Lake City.

I blame all of this on Don, Paul and Robert. They tell so many stories while traveling that we all become totally distracted. How can you follow road signs, when Don is telling stories about starting a fight and getting thrown out of game because the first baseman tagged him “too hard”?  Following directions while Robert tells stories of taking a bucket to a bar to get draft beer for his Dad when he was eight is virtually impossible. How can one focus when Paul is telling about his minister father taking a dump from a boat in a heavy fog only to have the fog lift while still exposed and discovering they were surrounded by boats?

Over time technology developed to help people like us. Before technology intervened we had to follow oral directions. These required one to turn on a particular road, and require you see the road signs. Directions discerned from looking at a map require that the map be oriented to the direction you are going. We never mastered either of these, so some geeks invented the Garmin GPS just for us.

We only need to plug it in and put in the address where we are traveling. Of course these are two skills we have not fully mastered. The Garmin directs you, in a pleasant female voice, to make the next turn in “300 feet” etc. It even nags you to “turn left”, “turn left” before deciding you missed your turn and need to go through “recalculating.” She never gets upset like your spouse does because you “never listen to her”.

Don and I took our first technology aided trip to a somewhat local lake. Armed with maps, Don’s Garmin, easy to see landmarks, and confident of avoiding wrong turns, we headed to SanChris Lake south of Springfield, IL. (His wife, Pat, put in the address for him.) Sanchris is a power plant lake and has a huge chimney marking the power plant location. The chimney can be seen from miles away, because the land around Springfield is some of the flattest in the world. The people near Springfield consider an ant hill to be an actual hill.

Needless to say, we couldn’t find the lake. Garmin said it was on the left, but there was nothing there but a farmhouse. Figuring we missed it we backtracked, all the way to Springfield. We tried again; again Garmin said it was on the left, so this time we turned right, traveled until we found the interstate highway and then turned back.

Finally after multiple back and forth trips into and out of Springfield we turned left at the intersection by the farmhouse, and decided to go past it. It was the ranger station and the entrance to the lake. The huge smokestack could be seen just past the tree line behind the “farmhouse”. (In our defense, there was only a small sign on the opposite side from which we came.)

Paul has given me some interesting trips. The first time I discovered he possessed the “gene” was while leaving Sullivan to return home from fishing Lake Shelbyville. ( See “Almost Holiday” from January 11, 2016). Arriving in Mattoon, IL some 18 miles south and east of Sullivan, we discovered we were not in Decatur, north and west of Sullivan.

Paul has made more wrong turns than “Wrong Way Corrigan”. While traveling with me, he has driven through the wrong toll lane; had to back his boat and trailer a 1/4 mile because he missed a local bar meeting place;  headed to Chicago on Interstate 90 while trying to locate Bloomington, and sent me on a trip through Canton while trying to locate a road that doesn’t go to Canton. The Chicago reroute was assisted by the On Star  rep. who couldn’t locate Interstate 39 on a map. It wasn’t really Paul’s fault you see. By the way, there was no exit before Chicago on Interstate 90 making a 4 hour trip into 8 hrs.

I confess, I have made a few miscalculations myself. Mainly my problems have arisen from attempts to save time with “shortcuts”. Don and I had a shortcut to eastern Illinois. When I offered to take a shortcut to Eastern Illinois University, Tim M., who was traveling with me said “We black folks don’t like shortcuts through the country”.

I should have listened to Tim. While attempting to visit Jim C. in Marshall IL, I took my boss, Bob, on the shortcut. We traveled 50 miles out of our way, and then 50 miles back leaving us an hour and half late to meet Jim. Needless to say, no one in the district accepts directions from me.

Faced with our inability to locate where we are traveling, every fishing trip begins with an adventure.  No one completely trusts Garmin or On Star, but they at least pay attention when stories are being told. Fortunately we have always made it and have never been "lost".  However, to make sure we get there safe, Don, Paul and Robert always call their spouse upon arrival.

 Connie has given up on me.