My husband and I travel well together, including navigation, which can be a challenge for some couples. It may surprise you to learn that I am the navigator. I am in charge of entering our destination into my iPhone, then aiding and abetting Siri to get us where we are going.
During a recent trip to Connecticut and New York, we hit a real snafu, a total humdinger, a super-duper oopsie daisy. After our last stop on our itinerary before returning home, we crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge (aka the Governor Mario M Cuomo Bridge), which spans the Hudson River. It is our bridge of choice when traveling north, it will keep us from getting caught in the New York City traffic. Siri, however, apparently likes the chaos, always taking us as close to Manhattan as possible. To prevent this, I will plot the route in sections, first asking Siri for directions to the bridge. Once traversing the water, I then request instructions to our actual destination. We use the same process for returning home.
Operating under this premise, we left our final site, Siri led us to the bridge. Once on it, I told Siri to take us home. When that mapping was loaded, I checked to make sure that it was going the way that we prefer, only to find that none of it looked familiar. I didn’t understand what was happening, so I canceled it, then did it again. Same outcome. This was weird. We knew that we stayed on the road after the bridge for about 10-12 miles, so Mister Rain suggested I wait a bit to make a second attempt. I did just that, but the path was still not correct. I next entered a different point close to our house, with Siri then seeming to have us making a course correction that would work.
Until we found ourselves about to get on the bridge again.
There was no way to turn around so over the bridge we went. Now we were back from where we had just come.
Duplicating the process I had just taken gave us the identical steps, or miles, we did not want. This was making no sense. I wanted my husband to take a look but that was not an option with him operating a 3,000 lb. motor vehicle. Rinse and repeat. You can see where this is going. Not home, that’s for sure.
In all, we would experience the Tappan Zee Bridge four times. It was not until I launched a thorough investigation to write this story that we figured out what had caused this fiasco. It required maps as well as the Google Earth app, plus a a reenactment on the dining room table. What we deduced is that when we made the drive from Litchfield, Connecticut to West Point, New York, we unknowingly (obviously) crossed the Hudson River, making it unnecessary for us to travel over it to go home, meaning that when we first found ourselves on the Tappan Zee we were actually driving away from home instead of towards it. That is why Siri’s plan after we got off the bridge was not recognizable to us, we were going the wrong way.
Now we are known to yell out in the middle of the night “Are we on the bridge again?” We do this on purpose, because we are an old married couple that still likes to have fun in the bedroom.
Sure, things get contentious between Mister Rain and me on a long road trip, but we get through the big moments by laughing. This quadruple bypass had us rolling . . . on the Hudson River.
#sisterrain #alittlesightalotofheart #legallyblindtraveler #travel #tappanzeebridge #governormariomcuomobridge #thefourthtimesacharm
