Ask anyone in my family. Anyone of my friends. Anyone who’s ever ridden in the car with me. They’ll all tell you the same thing.
I get lost.
A lot.
Apparently, Georgia is very capable of taking this skill of mine and . . . emphasizing it.
I get lost in Nebraska. Where the roads are straight. Where intersections happen like clockwork at perfect right angles. Where it’s flat and you can usually see the town you’re driving to miles before you get there.
In Georgia, I’ve discovered, it’s worse. Much worse. You can’t see anything a mile away. Too many trees. Intersections don’t intersect at right angles. Too many hills. And nothing’s straight. Too much water.
You may not be surprised to hear that I got lost. Twice. In 24 hours. It happened like this . . .
I arrived in Gainesville after 18 hours of driving at 9:00 at night only to discover that my mapquest directions ended on the road. Let me clarify. I was looking for a house. Not a road. I think the house is about 45 minutes from the Interstate. It took me an hour and a half to get there. In the dark. With speeding cars getting pulled over all around me, and no speed limit signs to tell me how fast not to go.
Welcome to Georgia.
The next day, it happened again. I had been given very specific directions to get to AIM headquarters. Left on Old Cornelia Highway, drive for awhile, turn right at Limestone Parkway, blah, blah, something about a gas station . . . So, I jumped in my car half an hour before I was supposed to be there, found Old Cornelia, and turned left.
And there I was, driving down a road I didn’t know looking for a street that wasn’t there. But I didn’t know that until later. You see, another thing they like to do in Georgia is change the names of their roads. So, although the real name of the road is Limestone Highway, the sign over the intersection says SR11. I saw SR11 clear as day. I went right on driving. Twenty minutes later, I thought maybe I had missed my turn somewhere and turned around.
I was 45 minutes late to my meeting.
Welcome to Georgia . . . again.
The good news is, the road network here matches up really well with how I’m feeling about life right now. I don’t know where I’m going. I never know when the road’s gonna dip or swerve or disappear altogether. I get a little nervous when it gets dark.
The other good news is that I’m not driving this alone. He hasn’t let me run out of gas. Yet. He hasn’t told any of the tires to spontaneously combust. Yet. He hasn’t sent a deer leaping gracefully into the windshield of my car. Yet. He’s never failed me. Yet.
I’m beginning to think He never will.
