So, it's been over a month since the day where a biomechanical abomination has been unleashed upon the roads of Israel. And I've done a lot less driving than I expected I'd do, largely because of this ridiculous war going on around here lately (so the increased death toll isn't related to me, guys, sorry to disappoint). Along the way I found out my glasses needed a solid kick in the teeth because my eyes would lose focus at night - and so I got a new set, which fixed THAT problem.
So aside from a few long multi-hour drives to the middle of no where and back with the 'rents, I haven't had much time to stretch my flight muscles so to speak. And so - when today, ze mother and ze grandmother had an appointment to get Needled Chinesely and (as it happens every rare once in a while) the acupuncturist saw them at her house (which has another one of her practices - the primary one is in Tel Aviv), which is pretty much p. much in the middle of no where near Jerusalem - we figured it might be a great opportunity. And so, around 11-something, we set out, picked ze grandmother up and launched off into a rather awesome drive which combined long stretches of open road and a few slower winding roads with some utterly gorgeous view - made it there, they got their stabs, I sat around listening to music on my phone, then we headed back, stopping along the way for some food and later for some food shopping. When we got back here, I had an hour or so to rest before having to head out for one of my art classes - and instead of taking the bus as I usually do I figured it was about time to attempt to grab the car and make my very first actual solo flight, so to speak.
This is where things started getting phenomenally fucking silly.
... I'm a new driver, right? I have no sense of direction, right?... So, my phone's internal GPS decided to have a catastrophic meltdown. I basically realized that I'm not going in the right direction, found the first place to stop without being in anyone's way, phoned home - apparently my mother's been having a similar issue with her phone. Of course, by that time I was already going to be hopelessly late - But I figured, y'know, screw it - I'm not missing this one. Today was my last art class for the month, my instructor's flying off to Belgium for all of August, and I wanted to finish this damn portrait I was working on beforehand, delay or no delay.
Now. We actually have an Actual GPS Unit that ISN'T phone-based, but it wasn't in the car at that particular moment - so I figured I'd head back home, grab it and try again. So I doubled back home (after some navigation shenanigans because where I parked didn't have anywhere to actually do a U-turn so I had to basically do a labyrinth-exploration-sequence to find my way back home to begin with), parked the damn car, headed back up, picked up the NOT phone GPS...
And as you can probably guess, things got even sillier after that.
Whoever built this device had NO IDEA HOW TOUCHSCREENS WORK. The calibration is WAY off - which makes it a Pain in the Arceus to actually bloody input a destination - and there's no calibration options to speak of that I could find either. So yeah. Spent ten minutes or more just fucking typing in a god damn address and waiting for the thing to PICK UP THE SIGNAL... and I am not sure HOW long it took me to actually back out of the fucking parking (because I suck at reverses omg. new driver. can't help it. i will get the hang of it eventually >>;) - but eventually these minor setbacks were set aside and I hit the road.
Once this GPS decided to play nice and pick up a signal, it was FAR more cooperative - I had a quiet drive over to the art class until I tried to find a damn parking space. My first attempt kind of got botched, so I pulled out back onto the road and drove further, when the thing suddenly started trying to direct me into right turns that don't quite exist. From here to there I got back to the street exit and had to do a pretty fucking silly loop to get back to it which included the GPS telling me to take a U-turn where U-Turns are Not Allowed and probably giving me an indignant look when I ignored its recommendation to break the law. You can't trust electronics these days, can you?
Eventually I found what I thought was a parking spot - there was a sign that seemed to indicate that is what it was - and so I proceeded to park. Something felt off, though, especially considering I was the only car parking there and the sidewalk seemed to be marked with what could have either been a no-parking zone or a bus-stop zone - it was kind of difficult to tell in the rather low light. And so I check the sign and as it turns out, it's a parking zone in weekends and holidays, but not otherwise. Welp.
So I got back in the car and in the process of pulling myself out of the spot I managed to PUT MYSELF ON THE OTHER FUCKING SIDE OF THE ROAD ENTIRELY somehow (at least I was in the right orientation for that side of the road at the end of that ill-fated extraction attempt and there was no one anywhere in range that could have been exposed to THAT glorious fail maneuver)... and then I found a reasonably perfect parking spot, managed to handle THIS one okay, finally parked the damn car and headed off to the freaking class, even though I missed an hour and a half of it due to my magical ability to turn what should have been a simple half-hour trip into two hours of complete bullshit - but hey, I managed to finish the picture, and the way back was much bloody saner. So, all's well that ends well. Hopefully next time will be much less ridic.
So yeah. Long day, most of it spent behind the wheel. Still fun.
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