We finally made it to the Big Easy! Beautiful day and relatively easy drive. After breakfast at our Montgomery hotel, we took a leisurely walk along the pond there. The white herons of the night before had gone—off to scout out food and action elsewhere before returning to their nesting tree to sleep. The ducks and geese were in full force, though. As soon as they spotted us, they waddled our way as fast as their webbed feet could go, expecting a handout (which sadly they did not get). Our favorite was a black duck with a round tuft of hair atop his head, which caused us to dub him the punk duck.
On the way to New Orleans we stopped to see our old friends Rick and Linda in Gulfport, Mississippi, where they’re staying for the next four months. They took us to a wonderful restaurant along a bayou, where we feasted on catfish (John) and flounder (me). The view from the deck made it seem as if we had already arrived in New Orleans.
During our discussion over lunch, Linda informed John that maps were passé, and that Ms. Garmin was queen of all things directional. John, of course, disagreed. He noted that you can always rely on a map even with there is satellite interference or when Ms. Garmin insists on recalculating. The rest of us weren’t buying his argument.
Later, as we tooled down Route 90 along the Gulfport coast, I suggested that John key in our New Orleans hotel’s address so we could get an idea of how long the trip would take. The ornery little machine refused to acknowledge that New Orleans existed. Texas was nonexistent as well. In fact, all the states included in my journey west of Mississippi had simply vanished, as far as the GPS was concerned. And I thought my memory was bad. . .
Apparently, when John was updating the maps as I had requested before our trip, the GPS initially loaded only those along the eastern seaboard before it ran out of space. He bought an additional memory card and went through the process of updating the maps all over again (a process which he assured me took two days and much angst). Since the new card provided plenty of memory, he assumed everything was all set—until today when we hit our little blip.
John’s theory: The bleeping GPS ignored the new data and just retained the eastern seaboard because it was defective. Either that or it had a stroke.
Sue’s theory: Ms. Garmin didn’t like John’s attitude and reacted to his hostility by shutting down.
Whatever the case, the thing wouldn’t work. Mr. Maps-Are-So-Superior started to panic because he didn’t think we’d be able to find our way to the hotel using just the Mapquest maps and directions I had printed. So we pulled into a Walmart, forked over 100 bucks, and drove out with a new Ms. Garmin, which of course came with its own mount (see my previous blog on our purchase of a GPS mount).
But it got us here, and everything is great. More tomorrow, time for bed.
