Between Victoria and Manhattan, KS (my next scheduled stop) is the city of Salina (Suh-line-uh). On my original trip plans, I intended to stop there. When I lived in Manhattan, some friends and I traveled to Salina on Sunday mornings to help a church plant. My friend Jeremy was (is?) a musician, so he became their worship leader. The rest of us helped with set-up and filling the seats. I checked online while planning the trip and realized that I couldn't remember the name of the church, so had no way of knowing if the church was even around anymore. Which meant that the Salina stop soon lost it's place on my itinerary.
At this point of the trip, I was still on major highways, so had the pleasure of seeing the billboards as I approached Salina. One was for a yarn shop. So, I had the clever idea of stopping there to bring my mom back some unique yarn. Some billboards are more helpful than others with addresses and such. This was one of the more unhelpful ones. There wasn't an address or name listed that I could see, speeding by at 75 miles an hour.
When I landed in Salina, I tried to find the yarn shop on my GPS. I came up with one, so told the GPS to lead me there. I was following the turn by turns when it told me I had arrived. I didn't see the shop, so continued forward intending to turn around and keep looking.
Since I had set the yarn shop as a "via point," my GPS wanted to continue on the journey, thinking that I had stopped already. She kept repeating "when possible, make a u-turn." Over and over again, she repeated it without pausing in between. About drove me crazy, so I told her to "stop." (By pushing a button, not by just talking to her.) I figured she must have sunstroke or something, from having been on my dashboard for the better part of the last day and a half. Who knows, maybe machines really are more sensitive than we realized.
Since she wouldn't stop telling me to turn around, I decided to turn her off for a bit. Surely that would reset her circuits. Well, something I hadn't thought about is that I had also set my GPS with a code that has to be entered when she's turned back on. Ya know, a safety feature, in case she gets stolen out of my car. It seemed to make sense, with all the travel I had planned.
Now, I know that I'm not supposed to operate the GPS while operating my vehicle. But come on, you think I'm really going to pull over every time I need to change directions? Not so much. I must have been going over some bumpiness on the Salina roads, because I'm sure that my finger bounced when entering the code. How else could I have entered a wrong number? I mean, I know my codes.
At any rate, the wrong number locks the machine. However, you're welcome to return to your "safe" place, which will also unlock the machine. Uhm... my safe place is at least 8 hours away. There ain't no way I'm goin' back at this point. I thought turning it off might help reset it, so I did that. Admittedly, it was only for a few seconds and then back on. Which oddly didn't help much. At that point, she was useless to me, so I turned her off, intending to just put her away.
Well, I had no maps for my trip printed out. Why should I? I had a GPS. Of the maps I had with me, I didn't have one of Salina either. (And no, I wasn't going to stop and ask for directions. Oddly, the thought never even entered my mind.) Well, with nothing better to do, I wandered around Salina trying to figure out how to get back to the freeway. I had finally found the yarn shop, but at this point, I had no desire to stop.
Back and forth, up and down the streets, nothing was leading me anywhere. It's been about 5 minutes, but I was starting to panic. What was I going to do if I didn't have my compass? (I know, how did I travel before the GPS?) I decided that I had to try, so I turned the GPS back on again. Miraculously, she was back to her normal screens... and allowed me to enter my code again. Which worked this time. Thank God!
At that, I was back on my way. I knew I shouldn't have stopped in Salina.
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