This post doesn’t have any real substance, so please free to continue wasting your time through more exciting means… Oh look! There’s an ants nest and a magnifying glass, now run along and have fun… If you’re still reading, all I have to share is a mildly humorous (only MILD dammit don’t get your hopes up!) story from my weekend…

Saturday I was working at Springfield Lakes again on a joint venture sure to make the ASX 100 list (another story).. Now this is a long drive for someone who lives in one of the Brisbane City Councils northern most suburbs! It’s also the first time I’ve been out their since getting the GPS thing-oh-ma-jig… So even though a knew how to get their I thought I’d see if it could find me a faster route! Plus the novelty still hasn’t worn off – picture me asking it for directions to the corner shop.. Haha!

For those of you who are ‘out of touch’, it knows where you are via satellites (Ohhh, Ahhh..). You can give the thing-oh-ma-jig an address, and it works out a route to your destination, then directs you as you drive. For example “Turn left in 800 metres”, “Cross the round about”, “Turn right at the end of the road”, “Watch out for the cat!!” etc… Anyway, it usually asks when establishing a route whether it should avoid toll roads or not. I’ve always said they’re okay, as if I’d drive through the city just to get to the other side of the Gateway bridge!

So on the Saturday I said go for it don’t bother avoiding tolls…

In hindsight, how the funk was I suppose to know Brisbane had SOO many toll roads – 3 in total for a 50 minute drive… I swear it went looking for tolls as though it was some ‘tourist drive’, really popular destination with all our international visitors I bet “Brisbane Tolls”.. Admittedly it was an easier drive highways all the way, but its was longer in distance and took about the same length of time as my normal route!

On the way home I decided to go the way I normally do… I let the GPS know where I was going anyway just too see what directions it would give me.. It will continually recalculate the route if it notices you’re going a different way from what it suggested…

So I start driving home my normal way along and its telling me to do a u-turn, ON A HIGHWAY.. What do I look like a stunt driver in some American police chase scene?! Sure let me just rip on the hand brake pull of a 180 degree maneuver, Okay that part is easy.. its avoiding be hit by the trucks coming from the opposite direction that worried me!

So I ignored the directions and waited for it to recalculate another route.. For the next 10 mins it kept saying aloud only the one word “IMPOSSIBLE“… Like what tha!? I’m on a highway, heading north, the way I would normally drive home! How can it NOT be possible to calculate a route home… An just moments before it want me to head south along the highway, which would be heading in the wrong general direction…

Not to mention I was that I was on the same highway it had brought me along just that morning!! Perhaps it had other Tolls it wanted to be see else where! Hahaha..