Recalculating

My youngest sister Katherine has celiac disease, and she told me to go to this bakery last summer in NYC to send something gluten-free to her.
I, being a neglectful and otherwise self-consumed sister, never got around to it.

The other day, when I told her that said bakery had published a cookbook, she said (among other things),
"Will you promise me that we will go to NYC for an entire summer sometime in the future?? Whether we are 50?? or 27?? or in a few years??"

Cute.

Well, that got me thinking about a very plausible roadtrip this summer...that I know will be made possible only with Garmin.

Sweet little Garmin. Also known as "Garmie."

Why I would trust my life, your life and your cousin's dog's life with Garmin GPS:

A couple years ago I was driving my sisters and I back to our lake house from the Boston airport from dropping off a friend.
Even though we've been spending summers back east for 15+ years, I had never personally driven the route before.

There are 3 essential highway turn offs one must make, but even with the bazillion warning announcements and distance indicator counting down every last 0.1 mile, I somehow missed the last turnoff.

Feeling uncharacteristically hopeless, my face flushed red and my inner dad kicked in (he's a little paranoid-slash-uptight sometimes), and I started panicking a little.

With a tinge of sneer (all you with a GPS will know), Garmie announced, "RECALCULATING."

My younger sister AC, who is completely clueless with directions or any street smarts (love her, but it's true), feigned knowing what to do and eventually resorted to gazing out the window. Then Katherine piped up, "Well, just follow the recalculated route; we should be just fine."

So into the statuesque woods of New England we went, with Garmie at the helm.
We turned onto quaint little streets, into unassuming neighborhoods, two-lane 'highways' passing small lakes... and I kid you not...

a few miles of straight-up graveled DIRT ROAD.

I remember being on that ominous dark dirt road with headlights beaming, my sisters and I looking around at ourselves nervously.

In that moment, I simply made what would become a self-fulfilling prophecy: "If Garmin gets us home from this, I will never have reason to doubt it again!"

(That statement, I now realize, is riddled with spiritual entendres)

Because, to make a long story short, it did.

Bonus: we didn't lose but maybe 3 minutes of time!

To conclude, sometimes our lives get unexpectedly recalculated, rerouted to places unforeseen. But if we always have ourselves connected to something higher than ourselves (whether a GPS or God), as Katherine said, "we should be just fine."