A-Z Blogging Challenge - N is for Nightmare

If you came here for April's Use Your Words, click here!

However, if you have a minute, check out today's contribution to the A-Z Blogging Challenge, letter N:

To get straight to the point: I didn't have nightmares while traveling. I don't usually have them ever, thank God!

This post is about my travel companion, Dr. Nightmare.

He's my GPS.

My GPS's voice, to be exact. 

At first you think he's just giving instructions, using his haunted voice. 

"In one and a half miles keep left, then turn left."

If you always drive around in the city you'll never fully get to enjoy what he has to offer besides telling you to turn left or right. When he's getting bored (meaning you're just going straight for at least five minutes) he'll say things like: 

• "What's this noise coming from the trunk?"
• "Was this a low flying whitch?"
• "Have you seen my spider that was crawling around here earlier?"

I'm kind of glad I knew about this from our Canada trip. 

Just imagine you're on the road on your own, in an area you don't know, it's getting dark, and he'll suggest purchasing some rope or taking a trip to the graveyard. He really does this!!

Now, as fun as this is, I think I need a "better" GPS. One that gets me and keeps me out of trouble.

I'll give you an example:

On the day that I was supposed to fly from L.A. to Seattle I left my hotel in Pasadena shortly before noon. I heaved my bags in the trunk, buckled up and entered "LAX rental car return" into my GPS. Then "Souplantaion, on my current route". It suggested a couple addresses, I chose one that seemed pretty close to the airport, and off we went.

Dr. Nightmare made me use streets in neighbourhoods with nice houses and lots of stop signs. Did he know what he was doing? Shouldn't we take the freeway?

Well, he had always taken me where I wanted to go, so I trusted him. 

I was relieved when we finally ended up on the 101, but not for long. 

"Exit right" he said soon enough. I didn't mind too much when I saw the name of the street:

Cool! I might bump into Jake, Billy and Alison! 

I had no idea just how long Melrose Avenue is!! And how many red lights one needs to pass. My eta kept getting later. Also I was hungry. And a little worried. At this rate I would end up not having lunch and having to go straight to the airport!

We seemed to be getting closer! "Look for parking space" What was that? It popped up on my GPS like a text message. I tried to click on it, maybe it would guide me? Nope :-(

Holy sh** 

I had ended up in Beverly Hills, in the heart of it all, with lots of buildings - but no parking!

Shouldn't a GPS know better? 

Shouldn't a smart GPS, at the very moment it understood you needed to drop your rental car at the airport, ask questions? 

Questions like "what time do you need to check in?"

And upon getting requests for a restaurant, wouldn't it be the GPS's job to say 

"Girl, I can see you're hungry. Now let's be realistic, we're in the Los Angeles area. There is no such thing as going for a quick bite somewhere. We have traffic. Everywhere. At every hour of the day. Buy some crackers at the gas station and hit the road!"

If anybody knows of a GPS that does this? Let me know! I need it!