My GPS flunked Geography 101

So, if you were headed to Essex Junction, Vermont from Warren, Maine, would you take I-95 into Massachusetts? No? You wouldn't? My Magellan GPS unit would. >:-/



I know, I know -- never blindly follow the GPS. Why? Because they're evil. Nevermind the Terminator movies. Forget the Matrix. Don't give the Cybermen of Doctor Who fame another thought. The machines that will bring about the downfall of Man are sitting on our dashboards and bobbing along, seemingly innocuous, in the backpacks of our Boy Scouts. Seriously. Remember this when we're all driving like lemmings off of high cliffs into oceans and ravines, rambling down the dirt roads of in-breeder-laden enclaves in Washington County, or being shunted into the Boston -- Boston MASSACHUSETTS, people!! -- late afternoon traffic. Evil, I tell you.



And it's not bad enough that I'M apparently functionally retarded. My mother -- who has been to a resort in Vermont that is within 40 MILES of Essex Junction, mind you -- waits until we pass a sign that says "Boston....23 Miles" before saying, "You know, this isn't how your father and I went to Vermont. We never came into Massachusetts. We were never on the Interstate at all."



o_0



Way to speak up there, Mom. [Legal disclaimer: Let's assume, for purposes of this post, that I DON'T become a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth, regressed-to-adolescence head-case whenever my poor mother says anything that could even remotely be construed as criticism. Because... yeah. But anyway...]



Fortunately, I DID have the presence of mind to at least throw the (woefully unglanced-at) atlas into the car while I was packing, so I had her take a look at it, as SURELY Essex Junction must be right on the border of Vermont and Massachusetts. I mean, modern technology must of course be vastly superior to my mother's memories of a trip she took twenty years ago.



http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmIycG51BF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEc2VjA2ZwLWJ1dHRvbgRzbGsDbGluaw--#mvt=m&lat=43.871769&lon=-72.451218&zoom=9&q1=vermont



Please note where Essex Junction is. Then please also note where the Vermont-Massachusetts border is. One thing will be immediately clear to those of you who, unlike me, bother to look at the map: these two places are not remotely close to one another.



So, lesson learned the hard way: When driving to a state you've never been to, it might be a good idea to at least GLANCE at the map before blithely hopping into the car and setting forth. The gas tank will appreciate it, as will the dogs in the crates, and their bladders and rumbling bellies. Do not, under any circumstance, assume that your GPS unit knows what it's talking about, or that it in any way has your best interests at heart. It doesn't. It wants you to die a horrible, fiery death as it plummets you into a box canyon or whisks you into the 43,642 mile-per-hour cluster-#%&$ free-for-all that is driving in Boston.



Evil.