Are we there yet?

Tonight I am in Meadville, PA. Getting here was a comedy of navigational errors.

Dave dropped me off at the Paoli train station for the 10:23 train to Harrisburg. In Harrisburg I would join my presentation partner Hank for the (usually) 5 hour more or less car ride to Meadville. We have a presentation tomorrow at 9 a.m. The train ride was uneventful for me but not for the poor woman who got on at Mt Joy and thought she was going to New York! Poor thing had to go to Harrisburg, change her ticket and start over.

Shortly after arriving at the train station my phone rang. It was Hank. "Had some trouble picking up the rental car and then got on the highway going the wrong way. Sorry, I'll be there in 10 minutes" he said. Little did I know that this would be just the beginning.

We stopped at the Pennsylvania Association of REALTORS (PAR) building to pick up our presentation stuff and equipment and headed to a local pizza shop because Hank was hungry for lunch. It was about 1 pm now. I passed on lunch as Dave and I had a big breakfast at the Paoli Diner before he dropped me off at the station. Lunch over we got in the car and were finally on our way.

30 minutes later Hank says "Why are we near Gettysburg?" We were heading the wrong way on the Route 11/15. Still not sure how that happened. We just weren't paying attention. So we turned around and headed back. So an hour after we started out we were finally on our way. As we approached the exit for 322 Hank started to get off on 322 East until I said "Why are you going east?" We had to back up a few feet and head to the west exit. 322 was detoured for a short bit through State College but at least that wasn't a wrong turn on our part.

We stopped in Dubois for dinner at Perkins and finally arrived at exit 147 to Meadville. Now I must tell you a few things about this trip. This is the 5th year in a row we have made this trip. We've been doing this series of presetations around the state for 5 years and Meadville is the only location where the hotel we stay at has been the same hotel for all five years. We should be able to make this trip by remote control. (Hmm maybe that was our mistake). Anyway, typically we print out directions from google maps or one of those and bring them with us. This year, Hank decided that we'd made the trip so many times plus we had the gps on his phone we should be fine. Uh huh! After dinner at Perkins he typed Holiday Inn Express Meadville in the GPS. It told us exti 147B. We did that. We drove for about 5 miles both of us saying, this doesn't look right. I don't recognize these stores and other landmarks.

We pulled over and tried to enter it again and it tried again to send us to the wrong place. I wondered out loud if we maybe weren't in a bad episode of the twilight zone. So we turned around and went the other way. And sure enough the hotel was about 2 miles the opposite direction off the highway. I was laughing. Hank was trying to but he was so embarrassed from the other wrong turns that were his doing he was having trouble finding the humor in it.

When we arrived at the front desk finally the clerk asked us if we'd had a nice trip. I just about lost it then and Hank glared at me and then explained to the clerk about the GPS taking us the wrong way. She said, "You know, I've heard that before. There must be a GPS glitch somewhere". Well that made Hank feel better but it still took us over 8 hours to get from Harrisburg to Meadville.

Tomorrow we drive to Greensburg (southeast of Meadville). Dave says I should bring him a souvenir from Cleveland.