Do you think Santa would really have this problem?
Andy was an hour and fifteen minutes late coming home last night because of technology. As he was driving on one of the dirt roads to the highway he met a young woman walking. He stopped and it turns out she was from Finland and someone at her motel told her going through the mountains was a scenic way to get to Santa Fe (?). So she said she put her destination in Google and was following the instructions until the road got worse and worse and she realized they had led her astray. She tried to turn around to go back, but it was slippery and she ended up royally stuck in a ditch. She had walked two to three miles, so Andy had her get in and they drove back to the car. Unfortunately it was an SUV and the Jeep was too light to pull it out.
It was getting too late for him to drive back to the house to get the truck, so he drove her down here and suggested she ask the police department if they knew of a towing service. There’s a motel essentially across the street, so she would be fine for the night. He gave her our number and said if she couldn’t get a tow, phone in the morning and he would get the truck and pull her out. She did phone and said she had found someone and thanked him for his help.
Modern technology can be great, but it isn’t foolproof.
December 23, 2019
that could have ended up in a bigger disaster for that young woman – thank goodness Andy came along with his kind heart…
what the Google GPS often does, is give the driver/other the easiest route to anywhere, i.e. avoiding overcrowded streets…alright if you know your general way, but not if it’s totally unfamiliar.
I’ve read that some residential areas are paying a big price for it because apps are directing drivers off the main roads. Changing times.
Yes, that is a very lucky woman – thanks to Andy for his kindness.
Mom says a lot of the GPS apps are not always reliable. But they do come in handy sometimes.
Wishing you peace, joy, and all the best this wonderful holiday has to offer. May this incredible time of giving and spending time with family bring you the joy that lasts throughout the year.
Christmas Woos to you from your friends: Lightning, Misty, Timber, and Mom
Thank you. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas too.
There is always a glitch in everything…at some point or other. I am glad Andy was there for her…she was so blessed.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you, too!
Good for Andy. That could have been very bad.
Yes, it worked out well.
Andy is my hero. are you sure he’s not a marine? lol
it’s the kind of thing mine would do. and they are worth their weight in gold! xoxo
No doubt about it, I picked a good one. 😀
That woman is very lucky that Andy came along. He’s like the knight in shining armor who saved the damsel in distress 🙂
When my daughter was traveling from Pennsylvania to Colorado her GPS told her she had reached her destination but she realized that where it led her was not the correct location.
Unfortunately you can’t always trust it. Kaitlin and Torben wound up in a cow pasture once, as I recall. 😀
What a wonderful true Christmas story!
Yes, it was friendly and heartwarming.
I’m sure that’s exactly the sort of nonsense Santa would encounter if he ventured onto social media….
I’ve read so many stories about the unreliability of satnav. People ending up on narrow country lanes with no place to turn around etc. I’ve never used it, I always rely on hand-written notes to myself! Good that Andy was able to help the stranded traveller.
We haven’t traveled in years, but when we did I was always the navigator with maps. The Garmin GPS was a toy that made the trip more interesting.
We were traveling in Arizona recently with our motorhome (towing our car) and ended up being directed by the GPS onto an unpaved road. I should have known better, but figured it would be just for a short distance. It was fairly decent for about 10 miles then started getting worse. We had gone far enough I didn’t want to backtrack, thinking about the time we would lose. Then it got really bad. We got into an area where it looked like a flash flood had washed down the road and had left behind a lot of loose sand. Too loose and too deep and we got stuck.
I know enough to not try too long to work the vehicle out of being stuck.
We called our RV roadside service number and they eventually came back and told us they couldn’t help as we were more than 50 feet off of a paved road. Pffft!!!
So we called our insurance company for roadside assistance. They got in touch with a tow company and they eventually came back and said that it would be a recovery — which would cost — instead of roadside assistance since we were more than 50 feet off of a paved road. “That’s fine, we need the help.”
So I described where we were and they gave me an estimate of how long it would be since they had to come a ways.
Like I said before, this is Arizona. It’s early October and hot. Fortunately, our motorhome has a generator and an air conditioner, both of which were in use and all of the shades were down to limit the heat.
Finally, I saw a puff of dust and a vehicle off in the distance… then nothing!
The tow truck never showed up!
I looked again and realized that I could see traffic on Interstate 10! It was only 2 miles away!
After making more phone calls to our insurance company, we finally got a tow truck out to us — from the same company that didn’t show up before, different driver, the previous driver couldn’t find us. He got the motorhome out with me in the RV’s driver seat steering it. Karen drove the car out without getting stuck.
We were stuck for somewhere between four and five hours. I should have turned around long before we got stuck. It would have saved the time I was trying not to lose.
We never got charged. It got covered under roadside assistance.
That puff of dust that I saw earlier? That was the other tow truck driver about the time he gave up looking for us.
What had happened was that I had changed the GPS settings weeks before to remove the “avoid” setting for toll roads since the quickest route for our first travel day was via a toll road in Oklahoma.
Unfortunately, I removed all of the avoids, including the “avoid unpaved roads” setting. Weeks later, we paid for that mistake.
Wow! I’m glad it turned out all right. And I’m impressed your tow was covered, even though it was a horrible day.
Once we stopped traveling we dropped AAA because mostly Andy would be the one to need it and he’s usually too far off paved roads. We joined again this year because of all the trips to Santa Fe to his eye doctor. We don’t have a smart phone, so we now have a number to call if something happens. Plus we could get a tow back here.
It sounds as if you are still traveling a lot?
Yes, we are still traveling, not as much as I’d like to but probably a bit more than Karen would like. We did about 11 weeks in 2018 and about 5 this year.