Bound for Adventure

Sometimes life imitates art (Carney and Linkletter) and sometimes vice is versa. 

A few days ago I was behind someone at a traffic light with a bumper sticker that read 'I may be lost but I'm ahead of you,' which led me to guess the driver was a man and a bit later, passing him, I discovered I was right (never did figure out if he was lost). 

Yesterday in my email was a solicitation to become a driver for Uber. I smiled, and if you've ever ridden with me anywhere, around the block or across the country, you'd smile, too. It's not that I have a poor sense of direction (I didn't until we returned to the USA in '91, hand to God), but I actually have NO sense of direction.

Very early in our American adventure we were driving home in the dark from Waterford, not all that distant from our house in Norwich, and I discovered, somehow I was entering Westerly, Rhode Island, which, for the geographically impaired such as myself is NOWHERE near Norwich. Or Waterford for that matter.

Moving on two or so decades later. After driving to Derby with our daughter so she could purchase a car to replace the one stolen from in front of our house on a Sunday morning (the good Lord helps those who help themselves it seems), I unerringly found myself heading home to Norwich while admiring the view of the NYC skyline because I was driving in the wrong direction seemingly for hours. 

My talent could be genetically transmitted as both our daughter and her brother were both in the car and NONE of us noted anything until one of them mentioned a town we'd just passed while speaking to my wife/their mother on the phone who pointed out her concern at ever seeing us again. For the record, both children's sense of direction seems to have improved in recent years, proving that sometimes you travel fastest traveling without dear old dad.

Anyway, and this will come as no surprise to you, I will NOT be taking the fine folks from Uber or Lyft up on their generous and numerous offers to be if not Gypsy Rose Lee then at least a sort of gypsy cab as I cannot imagine ever knowing, much less hating anyone so much that I'd make them a passenger in my car as we set off on a road trip either from or to Hades. 

My motto then, as it has always been, is 'I drive above and beyond the speed limit so that I can get loster, faster.'  
-bill kenny