More reasons I hate to travel

I get lost. A lot. I even made the effort to print a bunch of ‘Driving Directions’ from Mapblast.com. Little good that did. I lost most before I got here, some were of the wrong places and others didn’t have enough details. It really started at the Madison airport. The lady from the rental car place tells me the car is parked right outside those doors, across the way and up the row a bit. She shows me the map. Fine.

Or not. As it turns out, the way she told me to go was actually the runway. Assuming they didn’t actually park the cars there, I looked elsewhere. What I did wrong here was walk away from the airport. Not so much wrong in direction as it was in preparation. I did remember to put on my coat and hat, but had forgotten to put on my gloves and get the car info out. This almost proved fatal as I didn’t notice I didn’t have any fingers left until a few minutes had gone by. Any more time and my mouth would’ve frozen shut, thus preventing me from opening my bag with my teeth to get the car info.

Blindly walking around the parking deck I finally found something that made sense. Cars. No signs, no arrows and no way to tell if they were rentals or personal, I forged on. Frankly, I was getting into a red Taurus whether I was supposed to or not. About the time I was contemplating the benefits of cryogenics, I found my car. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of a long night.

The worse part for me about finding the car meant I had to drive it. Specifically I had to navigate. With my resources limited and no signs to guide me, I was off. Way off. Oh, I made lots of stops, checked maps, asked for directions. Once I got decent directions there, do you know how many turns I missed? All of them. I’ll bet you’re thinking, "well, obviously he’s exaggerating, surely he had to at least get out of the parking lot correctly." And that’s why you should get down on your knees every day and thank God you aren’t me. Not only did I in fact mess up getting out of that parking lot, I did it twice.

There have been some other oddities so far as well. Like the hotel manager. As you walk up to the desk, the phone rings and the she answers the phone. Shortly thereafter, which of these phrases would you expect to hear:

1. Does it itch?
2. It’s hard to think of a restaurant open on Mondays.

I didn’t either and yet here we are.

Well, that’s the news from Horicon, which definitely isn’t Lake Woebegon.