And all the while, the road kept getting steeper and steeper, which is one of my nightmares. Luckily, I don't have my clutch anymore. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, racy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.

Today I'm going to talk about adventures with GPS Adventures in your own hometown. In your own hometown. Now, recently we had a lot of driving to do across the hill to the other side of town, mostly the well I call it going to the city. It wasn't across the hill from the valley to go to some of Bill's doctor appointments, and that means more traffic and more options of ways to drive home. Now I can navigate many different routes to go different places. Certainly, I've lived here my whole life and I know all the ways to go, but sometimes, when I'm faced with an hour-long or an hour-plus drive home and most of it is traffic I will rely on my GPS system, and this day was certainly that. So it started off normally. It told me that the estimate to get home was about 45, 50 minutes, which seemed normal. I know that its initial estimate is going to be more than that. I mean the initial estimate is what it is right, but the actual time it takes to get home is going to be more than that. Okay, so there's only so many ways to go from the busy, congested medical appointments area that we have to our house. I mean there's probably multiple ways. I mean our house. I mean there's probably multiple ways. I mean maybe there's I don't know 10 main ways. You can go over the hill into the valley. There's probably five or so routes that go over the hill, which is the freeway, and then you can go around through the downtown area.

But this particular day, the gps told me to take a turn that I didn't necessarily recognize. Well, let me just say that it started off okay. And then I took. Well, I had to take a wrong turn because I was in the middle lane and it wanted me to turn left, and by the time I realized that it didn't give me much notice, by the time I realized that there were 15 cars in the left turn lane and I was already past the end of the line and everybody was just sitting there, so there was no way that I could butt into that waiting line of 15 cars. So I decided to go one more block and I thought it would readjust and get me back on the same path. Now that might be the case, might've taken a completely wrong turn in a different route rather, I'm not sure, but it ended up taking me through the mountain, through the hill, over into the valley which was fine on a route that I had never actually been through before.

And what happened was at first it looked kind of innocuous right, it was a two-lane road and it was windy and it looked like it might connect with something more familiar it was a residential area and it was going up. And then we got to a point and it was already pretty narrow I mean a two-lane road right. But then it got even more narrow and I looked and it was still a two-lane road and I was starting to get a little nervous because people were coming up behind me and at one point somebody honked because I was going too slow, which I was going slow because I'd never been there before and the road was very curvy and I was probably going 20 miles an hour. Let me just say that when the road was narrow, it was getting more narrow and I don't even see how two cars could pass each other Right. I kept looking at the road, thinking there's no possible way that this is a two-lane road, except that it was Thankfully at that point when it was more narrow, there was not a car that came in the opposite direction, but there were still cars that were angry with me. So it's hello.

So at some point I did find a place to kind of pull off to the side and these cars zoomed past me, you know, like okay, I'm sorry. And then the GPS said at the next stop sign, turn right. And I was thinking, oh, there's a next stop sign or something. I mean I was really getting nervous because, like I said, we were going higher, we were climbing higher, we're going higher, we were climbing higher. And at the same time and this is what I don't understand about these roads is that in some small places there were, yes, there were metal guardrails, but not the whole way. And when I dared to look to my left I could see down, down, down, down, down, down down. So you're basically feet away from catastrophe. That's what I mean, understandably.

I'm a child of my fearful mother, who was just. She was born with fear in her heart. I understand, but this is, you know, somebody could come up and just hit you and you would. You would go, you know, over the edge, right, okay so, no guardrails, very narrow road steep. I remember at one point I used to be a very fearless driver. At one point I was like I just wanted to stop and go backwards, but that wasn't really possible. There was no way that I could turn around. There was no way to do a three-point turn, it was just impossible. And the driveways had gates on them. There was no way to turn into a driveway. So it was the epitome of let's just push on, just go forward, keep moving forward, don't look back, okay so?

And all the while the road kept getting steeper and steeper, which is one of my nightmares. Luckily I don't have my clutch anymore. I, years and years, and years, I drove a car with a clutch before my knees got really bad. I stopped doing that. What was that? Seven years ago? So much easier to drive now, but especially on these steep hills, I would have been in tears. So here we are. You can just see the road getting narrower and narrower, and me, I didn't cry, but I wanted to, and Bill all the time saying here's your next episode. Yes, yes, honey, if we live through this.

Finally we got to a point and the GPS started telling us at the next stop sign, turn right. At the next stop sign, turn right and then you'll be on Mulholland, which, if you live or you're familiar with Los Angeles, mulholland, is a pretty big street. Here it's a main street, so I felt more comfortable, but it wasn't until, literally, the road got even more narrow and then, finally, we saw another car that was not coming at us, so we felt better. Then we started going downhill and it was the same sort of situation. Luckily the road got wider because we were on Mulholland.

And again, I've lived here my whole life. I have been to many, many places in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and I'll tell you I had never been to this particular spot and I didn't even know it existed, and it's something like an overlook of the Hollywood Bowl. An overlook of the Hollywood Bowl, and I suspect that it is. We didn't get out and look because we were just too discouraged by the whole situation. But I suspect that it's an overlook from the rear area of the Hollywood Bowl. It must be pretty spectacular because I mean, you know, you can hear the angels singing, but it's a little parking lot and it says the overlook or you know something. So we kept going down and then we're going down, down, down and again very high up, no guardrails, and we could see downtown LA at a distance. We were very high, windy road, dare, I say it again, no guardrails. Anyway, we finally got down, which we both questioned, the idea that was this really the fastest route that we could have taken? I observed that possibly there was a huge accident everywhere else and that possibly it was, but it sure did not feel like the fastest route to get home. Then, of course, it dropped us in the Kawanga, like around Universal Studios, so we still had about over a half an hour to get home. It would have been great if it had dropped us at home, but no, we still had at least a third of our journey to go, very long day driving.

I think what is amazing about the GPS system is that it will adjust as you go and it will keep talking to you. I think sometimes that voice gets to be really irritating. I mean, it's comforting because it's comforting, because it's helping guide you, but then at some points it's really irritating because it's telling you to. You know, it says turn right, or turn right here and you're not ready. You're not prepared, or maybe there's something in the way and you can't turn right there and you want to start talking. At least I do. I want to start talking back to it, but of course you can't.

Anyway, I also did a big driving trip on Thursday last week. I had to go out to Whittier, and that's about 25 miles from my house, and I've done it several times now. And what is remarkable to me is that the GPS takes me on a completely different route every time I go. It's not even close to the same route. It's not like it takes me this time and it just alters a few blocks here and there.

I think it's wanting to confuse me so that I need to use it. I mean, back in the day when you had maps or you had a Thomas guide, remember you had the big, big map that you had to fold out, or you had a Thomas guide and you had to look at the graph on page 26B and you had to figure it out and you had to. Oh, here I go. You can't even figure out where you are anymore. I mean, if somebody had asked me where I was on that trip at the top of the mountain or four blocks from the top of the mountain or on the other side I had no idea where I was and what you know, I had no frame of reference where I was. I guess I could have stopped and I could have looked at the map on my phone, but honestly, I think it's just trying to confuse me, oh goodness.

So these are my rants for this week. I'm, I'm really happy if I can just drive somewhere where I know how to get there and I don't have to worry about, you know, multitudes of traffic or you know drive time traffic. I don't have to make an adjustment for traffic, I can just go. You know, I don't have to worry about, you know, a 10 mile trip taking two hours. I mean, what a luxury, right? Anyway, uh, today, the rest of today and tomorrow and some of this week, I don't have to worry about that. I don't have any big driving trips until the end of the week. So, on that note, that is all I've got for today. That is all I've got for today. I hope your GPS experiences are better than mine have been recently.

Next week we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me episode. Please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page Only Child Diaries or Facebook Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the Only Child Diaries Only Child Diaries.