OK, well, it really wasn’t entirely Gigi’s fault for what happened last week on a road near Orlando. But since it was Gigi’s instruction to take that on-ramp, I’ll put the blame on her. After all, that’s part of the fun of driving with Gigi – you get to put the blame on someone else when the directions go wrong and you wind up taking a wrong-turn.

Or, well, actually, you get to put the blame on something else.  You see, Gigi is our name for our Garmen GPS (i.e. “GG”) device that we have in our car.  “GG” turned into Gigi for me, though, as the name;   I mean, Gigi is the name of a musical, after all, and even the name of a song from that musical.

Gigi, am I a fool without a mind
Or have I merely been too blind to realize …

Chris and I hadn’t ever actually used a GPS device ourselves before we arrived in the U.S. in June.  Stan and Judie gave us Gigi, which was their spare, for our travels – thanks, S&J!.   One of the things I like about these systems is that they are programmed to tell you not only how to get to where you are going, but also helpful additional information,  like which side of the road things are on, and which lane you need to get it if there’s a quick maneuver coming up  (e.g. get off at exit 183 and stay to the right, and follow the sign to the next off ramp in 0.1 miles).  That’s handy.

However, we don’t always use Gigi, and even when we’ve turned her on for a trip, we don’t always follow her suggestions/directions, if we have a different idea of how we want to go.  When we ignore her suggestions she tends to fall silent for a while. I’m sure it’s really just the program re-calculating a new route once we’ve deviated from the original suggestion.  But it often can seem like she’s  pouting because we chose to follow our own path, not hers, and therefore she’s now ignoring us.

Gigi, While you were trembling on the brink
Was I out yonder somewhere blinking at a star

But I don’t think what happened last Wednesday was because she was annoyed with us for choosing to go to our destination that day without her help. You see, we’d used directions we had gotten off  the Internet to get to a place in Orlando. However, since the route involved a series of highways with exits, and because I hadn’t thought to get the reverse directions  on the Internet to get the exits names and numbers, we decided to plug Gigi in and give her a try. After all, all we needed to know was the exits on the different highways we come on, so what could go wrong? Right?

Well, let’s just say Gigi was of a different mind.  She had us start down a highway we’d taken, which I’ll call 517*, but in the opposite direction than we thought we needed to go to get back to Melbourne.  However, it was possible (we reasoned) that there was some rationale for that, so we kept going Gigi’s way.

Gigi the told us to get off 517 at the next exit ramp and take a highway (I’ll call it 501*) we hadn’t been on before.  However, as we approached the exit ramp to get onto 501, it was immediately apparent that there was massive construction on 501, and nothing was moving, either on the ramp we’d need to take or on the part of 501 that we could see in the distance.

OK, Gigi probably couldn’t have know that in advance. But getting onto 501 as she instructed just wasn’t on option.  So we continued down  517, ignoring Gigi’s entreaties to get off on 501. At the next exit on 517 we effectively did a U-turn, getting on and off the highway to head back the way we’d just come on 517.

Gigi, who had fallen silent as we did that  Uey type maneuver, sprung back to life as we approached the 501 exit from the other side. We ignored her again, and continued past the exit to get back to the secondary road we’d been on before we got on 517. Once back on the secondary road, we decided to try to retrace our original path ourselves.  But we left Gigi on. Gigi  didn’t speak to us again for a few miles, but then suddenly said something like  “in 0.1 miles, turn right for 508* and then merge left.”

Well, we remembered we’d come originally on 508, so that seemed like a good suggestion.  And there, up ahead, was a sign that  that indicated the next right-hand turn went to 508. So, we turned right.

What Gigi hadn’t mentioned, though, and what the road signs also failed to mention, was that to get on to 508 here you had to pay a toll, and so there was a two-lanes toll booth in the middle of the road. One lane was for people who have a pre-paid Epass in their car  – not us.

The other lane was marked  “Exact change (coins only)”, for people who carry a lot of change in their car – also not us  Neither of the lanes were manned, BTW, as neither of these options requires human interaction.

What was missing was the usual 3rd lane option, marked “Cash”, which is always manned by a person.  On the way to Orlando, each of the 4 toll booths we passed through had that Cash option.  But this road/on-ramp that we’d turned onto had only 2, unmanned booths. There was no chance of going back, though, and initially no clear way for us to go through without getting a ticket. I mean, we were certain with didn’t have an Epass, and we were pretty certain we didn’t have exact change, as neither Chris nor I carry a lot of change.

Ack! Gigi, what have you gotten us into?!

OK, well, as I said at the beginning, it really wasn’t Gigi’s fault, but in the heat of the moment we did blame her, as we needed someone to blame, and she was the one who suggested we take that ramp. It certainly would have been handy had she had a bit more information about the toll “plaza” on that ramp to tell us in addition to turning right and then merging left onto 508. Argh.  We were none too happy with Gigi nor the Florida highway system at that moment, I want to tell you. It seemed ridiculous there hadn’t been clear signs about this before you got onto this road. I mean, we didn’t intend to go through without paying, but for a minute or two that seemed like our only option.

However,  there were no cars behind us, so we remained parked for several minutes in the Exact Change lane and scrounged the car for every last quarter, nickel and dime we could find.  And pennies.  The sign said exact change,  it didn’t say no pennies. As it turned out, we had exactly 75 cents in change (including 5 pennies) with us in the car that day. No more, no less.

Ah, traveling with Gigi – never a dull moment.   Think of all the adventures we’ll have together down the road.

Oh Gigi, have I been standing up too close or back too far
When did your sparkle turn to fire
…
Oh, what miracle has made you the way you are