One quick lesson from this photo: Never trust the GPS with your life.
The year was 2009. For dramatic effect, let's say I was a young intrepid adventurer exploring the vast Canadian unknown. I was living & working in Montreal at the time, and set out on my first ever solo road trip.
On the very first day, I was lucky enough to receive a speeding ticket in my eagerness to make good time. Greeeaaat sign right? Then the next day as I found myself overjoyed to navigate the middle of nowhere, New Brunswick, the GPS instructed me to take a turn and drive some 5 km on a rugged snowmobile trail.
This was in June mind you. Absolutely zero traffic on that snowmobile trail in the thick of summer. It was very muddy though, riddled with deep ruts and flooded with rain water after a thunderstorm had recently passed.
But the GPS told me to take this rot, sorry I meant to say route... so who was I to question the tech gods? Strangely enough, I did a pretty good job of improvising for a little while. Carefully avoiding the rut lines, while still needing to get some forward momentum going amidst all the mud. That is until it seems I hit the trail almost exactly at midpoint, and got stuck the furthest away from either exit point. I'm sure this ominous Mister Murphy was looking down on me with a mischievous grin that day.
Quite the mudshow for lack of a more colorful term, and surprisingly apt for this s*ituation. I remember flooring the accelerator and the spinning the wheels nonstop to no avail. As I ventured out into the sweltering summer heat, the mosquitoes also didn't hesitate to swoop in. I rushed to my trunk where the bug spray was, but in a state of panic, I left my car keys inside said trunk while spraying myself, and closed the lid after. Of course by that time all the doors were locked, so I was in turn locked out of my own car, hundreds of miles away from home... (or kilometers, whatever tickles your fancy)
To make matters worse, I had no idea where I was. GPS was no help anymore on account of being locked outside my car, but I did have a cell phone with a little bit of a battery charge left. This was 2009 by the way, there was no GPS on my cell phone; it was one of those flip tops with something like a total of 16 glorious colors.
So I had the common sense at least to call the police. Not just any police mind you. It turned out to be the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Now that's special treatment, and when things started turning around for the better.
I didn't know where I was, but I could describe my surroundings, and spotted a handmade paper dish advert for a local store hanging from a tree. After a couple hours of savvy sleuthing, I'm happy to say they finally found me and towed me out.
All's well that ends well, but I learned never to trust the GPS with my life again. And thank God for the police. You best be sure I paid my speeding ticket from the day before as quickly as possible. A minor inconvenience for me in the moment, when I was clearly in the wrong. Then the police saved my life the very following day. There's no comparison really, they were there for me when it counted the most. Thank You.
All that said, please note this image is for personal use only, and prints have been disabled as a result.