adventures in driving

Wednesday I drove to Elmira where my dad's family is in order to do some MPD. Thursday morning I had an appointment and right after that I had to pick up Angela from her North Africa STINT debrief. The week earlier we discussed how to get there, which consisted of her telling me the name of the place, me searching it on google maps & getting the map. 

Thursday at noon I left St. Clements to drive to what I was led to believe was a retreat centre just south of Guelph. That was true, but not quite what I had in mind. The following was the map I had found in my quick google maps query:

maps wouldn't let me embedd a map, so here's the link to where the wrong directions brought me & where I needed to go. 

So that's pretty easy, I figured. But when I arrived at 12:30 sharp, I found I was in a residential area with nothing like a retreat centre in site. I had no address. All I had was the name of the place that was in an email on my iPod. It seemed as if I was screwed. So having NO CLUE where this thing was I stopped at a gas station and asked if they recognized the name. Being that it was a Christian retreat centre i figured they probably didn't recognize it. They didn't. They did recognize Puslich, ON and gave me directions to that. 

Ok, I realized at this point that I was on a bit of an adventure.

I got to the lights, drove to the next set of lights and found that there was not a gas station like the man had said. I continued on until I did find another gas station and went in for directions again. The guy pulled out a map (funny, you'd think I would have just bought it off of him since it was a store and everything) and showed me where I was. I had gone in the opposite direction the gas station guy had told me. Minor details. So I was twice as far away from where I needed to be. He gave me directions and as I drove I started forgetting them. I knew I needed to turn left in to the 34 & get to Brock St. but where the heck did I turn? My first left? The first stop sign? I took the first left and drove until the next main road. I found myself on hwy 6. Not where I wanted to be. I went down there and took what look like maybe it was the right road. I ended up back on the road I had turned off of that got me to hwy 6. Ugh. somehow i managed to weave my way to the original place that got me onto the 34. 

ANYWAYS, I got VERY LOST. And I still had no idea where this place was. I somehow managed to remember that where I needed to go was south-east and relatively near to the 401. I didn't mean to get onto the 401 but the road i was travelling on just turned into a turn-pike going east on the 401. haha oops. I took the first exit and found myself at a red light turning waiting to turn left. At this point I was soooooo frustrated and still had no idea where I was going. It was 1:45. I had been driving for almost 2 hours. I had previously prayed for a sign -- a physical sign or something else. 

And then there the sign was, in all it's glory. A van pulled across my vision as it turned left in front of me. And there she was, Selina one of the STINTers in the van. I knew that she had come from the direction that I was planning on turning away from. So I ended up turning right - driving, and miraculously found the place. Reunited with Angela!

For amusement sake I will show you the ridiculous route I took in getting to the place:

The pink lightning bolt is where I had my Selina sighting. I'd also like to point out that the purple line is not even the directions the 2nd gas station dude told me to go. He told me to take the 34 straight to Brock St = I wouldn't have a) seen Selina or b) really gotten to my destination like I had hoped. So the getting-lost thing was to my advantage... sort of.