Left. Left. Left.
That’s what I have to keep telling myself as I am attempting to stay on the left side of the road. Those of you who know me well enough, know I don’t know my rights from my lefts. Which makes this situation all the more comical. Add in a patient mother and a…we’ll call it…enthusiast(?) (trying to stay positive here) dad and you have a recipe for ensuing hilarity (and multiple unnecessary outbursts from the back (dad). Did I mention Australia is the land of a thousand roundabouts and that they honor the metric system?
Now you have the basis for one of my many driving calamities. So we’re driving from Brisbane to Noosa Beach where we will be staying for the night and already the Google Maps directions have been giving us fits, but we’ve managed so far to make all the correct turns and exits. We are almost there. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel when my phone decides that it’s done updating our location for the day and we are left to navigate manually. No big deal, we got this! Then we hit a roundabout that wasn’t on the map…uh-oh, what now?
As I enter the roundabout mom, in the passenger seat, starts to quickly and only slightly frantically figure out which exit we need to take and dad, from the back seat, fervently attempts to instruct mom how to navigate with no maps or GPS and inform me how to drive and to watch the road and to slow down all at once (which might I add I am already doing). Mass pandemonium! So I just tell mom, “hey, I’ll just keep going around til we figure out which one we need to get off of.” Pure, utter, dumb-founded silence from the back (success for once on this trip!) and a shocked look from my mom before she computes exactly what I just said. Priceless! Four trips around the circle later with me laughing hysterically from everything that just happened and we finally make the decision to just pick one because at this point we have NO idea which one to take. This trip is an adventure right!?! Long story short, we picked wrong and had to turn around but the levity it brought to the end of day was worth it. Definitely one of the more comical trials of this trip so far.
Couple of comments from dear old dad: I am a terrible passenger. Make no bones about it. I am used to driving so sitting in the back while traveling wound in heavy traffic on the wrong side of the road is TOUGH. I drive Laura crazy. Which does NOT help. Second: the GPS maps and road sign mismatch don’t help. It’s easy to head off the intended track to places unknown. This adds to the adventure though.