Searching For Directions

The Internet has its uses.

You can find love, sex and friendship.  You can buy a car, music, a house, new shoes, shampoo and books.  You can sell couches, handicrafts, taxidermy and used appliances.  You can make yourself sound smarter, look prettier and cook better.  You can stalk your ex, find your long-lost best friend and pretend you’re someone else.  You can also read this blog.

But of all these miracles of the Internet, I’ve found one consistent failing.  Directions.

A few years ago, Isaac and I spent a dreamy, wonderful week in the Finger Lakes.  Our first hotel actually had a free-flowing spigot of wine about 11 feet from our room’s door.  It was kind of like being a kid in a candy store.  It was the most beautiful October New York state has ever had, and we spent it outdoors traveling from vineyard to vineyard, winding through the most picturesque back roads, eating at Diner-aunts and just generally relaxing.

But the trip didn’t start out this way.  We set out from New York City and headed north.  We followed the directions–printed out from the internet–exactly.  But no matter what we did or how many times we backtracked and tried again, we just kept ending up in a grocery store’s parking lot.

After a five hour drive, and with the promise of free-flowing wine, this is not exactly the place that dreams are made of.  So we circled the parking lot until one of us managed a very weak signal on our cellphone.  “Hello? Oh, yes hi. We’re supposed to be staying at your hotel tonight, but the directions from your website have us ending up in a grocery store parking lot.” “Oh, no! Do we still have the Mapquest directions up on the site?  Oh yeah, you can’t trust those.”

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