Hello readers! Welcome to Menage a Monday…brought to you by One Nerve Left, Rock and Drool, Spawnocalypse, BORED Mommy (where I’m featured this week!), and me!

This week, I’m featuring Lizz, from One Nerve Left. You need to subscribe, fan her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter. You must! I’ve been reading Lizz since the beginning of time (last year when I started blogging) and she has never failed to make me laugh. Ever! Read on:

Ian vs. The Navi-hater

My husband, bless his geek, loves to discover the newest and greatest apps for our Blackberries. He has been on this months long epic quest to find a great and free GPS app to help our lost little souls. The problem with this quest is great AND free. We all know, you get what you pay for. Unless Billy Mays (RIP) is selling it. Then it is a bottled miracle for only $19.99.

He found an app called Gokivo. It’s supposedly a trial version, but we have yet to have the trial run out on us or ask us for money or sexual favors or anything. So we just keep using it. It’s a great little turn by turn voice GPS program. Search for nearby businesses, gives you estimated arrival time based on speed, dashboard view, the works.

So, for the second part of our vacation, we headed up to the Chicago area. Ian’s old stomping grounds. He didn’t NEED directions to tell him how to get there, but in the name of all that is technological and nerdy, he wanted to use it. It was almost like a challenge. “I know how to get there Gokivo. But can you enlighten me to a better journey?”

Gokivo was up for the challenge and spit out a route different from how Ian would have gone. Of course. It was man versus machine in a twisted version of Annie Oakley’s “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better”. With a raise of his eyebrow, and a quick nod of his head, it was on like Donkey Kong.

We happily rolled along Gokivo’s route, as Ian sang along to the radio, doing his (impressive) impersonations of Steve Perry, Elton John, and even Peter Griffin singing Prince. I sat there, amused, remembering this is one of the reasons I married this guy. Things were going pretty smoothly until, uh oh, a sign – “Traffic Incident ahead. Delay 35 minutes.” I yelled suggested to Ian to get off at the fast approaching exit, right before the point of no return, where we would have been tangled in this mess of traffic for a short eternity, with kids crying that they needed to pee, NOW! A quick jerk of the wheel and we are on the exit ramp. This took us off Gokivo’s golden route, but gave her the opportunity to show us what she’s made of.

“Recalculating Route,” she said flatly, veiling any sort of annoyance she felt about this unscheduled move. Deep down, I know she was resentful and was calculating revenge as she was calculating our new route.

Impressively, we were back on our path and around the traffic in much less than 35 minutes. Ian high fived the GPS, and we rowed merrily down the stream. Approaching Chicago, Ian was intrigued by Gokivo’s directions rather than following his own instincts and chose her highway over the other. She smirked, knowing what was up the road in a few miles.

Toll road. $1.25 ahead.

Fuck. I start digging all around the van like a crack ho looking for any silver loose change. I managed to get about $2.70 from nowhere. I’d make a pretty good crack ho. If not enough for a small rock, I could at least buy a donut and a medium coffee. First toll was a success. Gokivo just cast a sideways glance at Ian.

Toll road. $3.00 ahead.

First of all…THREE dollars?????? What the hell? Second of all. Damn you Gokivo!!!!Fuck. I don’t have those kind of change digging skillz. I’m down to a layer of 3 year old fries and Chuck E. Cheese tokens. So now what? What do they do when you don’t have enough change? Do they put you in toll jail to be some Lexus driving dude’s bitch? Surely we weren’t the first people to get stuck without toll money. Welcome to the 21st century. Duh. After a tense 7 minutes of waiting and wondering what tortures await us, we discover they take credit cards.

Again, we find ourselves rolling along. Nearing Gary, there seems to be a lot of road construction. Normally, the highway takes you near Gary, but far enough away to where you can marvel at its stinky, rusty, crimeyness from a safe range. However, when your off ramp is closed, Gokivo will happily tell you to “exit on the right” for a detour in a few miles, while suppressing her giggles knowing she is taking you straight into the heart of Gary. Damn.

Now we are stuck in some fucked up video game of sorts, driving in a neighborhood where our quaint little family doesn’t belong, trying to navigate our way out, while trying to look inconspicuous in our shiny suburban Toyota minivan. Ian is visibly sweating at this point. Cussing at Gokivo at every stoplight, where we are just a sitting target for Blog knows what. After the longest 5 miles of our lives, we are finally within sight of our exit from this hellacious level of “Grand Theft Minivan”.

This exit, too, is surrounded by construction. “Exit on the right” Gokivo chimes. Ian obeys and we go up the rockiest, dustiest off ramp I’ve ever seen. Except, at the end of the off ramp is….nothing. There obviously USED to be SOMETHING here. An overpass. And look at that. Now, there is not.

Not only is there no overpass, but there is no huge bright orange sign or anything flashing WARNING: BRIDGE OUT. I can only deduce that the construction workers were not so thrilled to be working in the heart of Homicideville, and in a haste to rush home that night and hug their families for what might be the last time, forgot to secure their work site. The only thing keeping people from staying on the off ramp and driving off to their death are two 6x6x12 (that would be INCHES, not feet, as one would assume) make-shift concrete uh…barriers? at the very end of the roadway. Had it been night and we had any speed behind us at all, we could have easily driven off this Bridge to Nowhere and taken us out of the game and anyone on the road below us out, too. Ian just stops and we both kind of stare at the lack of road in a mixture of amusement and befuddlement and sing “Ooooook” in stereo harmony. What the bloody hell, Gokivo? She just sits silently, smugly, maybe even a bit upset that we didn’t drive over the edge.

No game over for us. Ian turns us around and once again, we are chugging along and make our way to the new improved exit ramp WITH a functional overpass and we leave Gary and its murdery, hard-boiled egg stench behind us. The rest of our trek through Chicago, past the skyline and to the northern suburbs is pretty uneventful. Though, I would like to take this opportunity to say: If you are a driver in Illinois, the left lane is for passing. It’s not about which lane you prefer over the other. It’s not about how pretty the scenery is on the left versus the right. So get the hell over. If you are a driver in Illinois, and you didn’t know this. Now you do. Google it. I’m not making this shit up for selfish reasons.

At last. We arrive in Evanston. What a relief. We made it, no thanks to Gokivo, who OBVIOUSLY needs a “Avoid Getting Carjacked Route” option upgrade. My Mother In Law lives in a quaint old neighborhood with gorgeous, historic homes framed by beautiful, well kept yards and old churches Jesus probably helped build himself. The downside is that there are no parking lots for the cozy apartment buildings. Street parking only. Ian drops us off at the door to her building, unloads our luggage for us to carry up (like 50 flights of stairs, Holy Quadriceps, Batman!), and goes to find a place to park nearby. I should have taken it as an omen when I walk in the entryway and find this tile on the floor to greet me.

Panting, huffing and suffering a blow to our self esteem by realizing how out of shape we are, we get everything carried waaaaay upstairs. After a few minutes, I’m wondering what’s taking Ian so long, I call him. No answer. I know his phone is merely inches from him. My spidey-sense starts to go off. A few minutes later he calls back. Guess what?

Why? Because some asshole driver decided that going around someone who is turning right (Ian) by passing them ON the right is a GREAT idea. So in Illinois passing on the left is a no. But passing on the right is a Hell Yes! Fuckers. All that way, all that trouble, only to get into a fender bender upon arrival.

“You have arrived at your destination, Jackass!” she snickered. Go to hell, Gokivo.

Related posts:

1. Menage a Monday: Featuring BORED Mommy
2. Menage a Monday: Featuring Deb, from Spawnocalypse
3. How to Drive in Massachusetts