"Come to the Vaal for Christmas" said my sister cheerily, "it's only an hour and we're terribly easy to find"
The most important thing to remember is that you should never rely on one device to get you safely there AND back. Bob 2.0 (Nokia GPS system, updated in preparation for the trek following an unfortunate mis-direction through Kempton Park of all places) requires a trailer-load full of batteries to operate. This small design flaw seems to have slipped past the various testers surely employed by Nokia to prevent this sort of thing. Or maybe you can't drive for 4 hours in Sweden.
Getting there was simple enough, if a tad far for a day trip - taking us around 2 hours. I had used the search function to find the address and saved the route so as to be prepared. Bob was calm and confident, full of "Follow the course of the road" and "Turn left now" advice, with only a brief moment of understandable confusion when we joined the highway from Malibongwe road. He became more adventurous as we went, with "turn left now" instructions taking us on seldom-used back roads through sleepy dorps and lush fields in a general southerly direction.
We arrived at exactly the right house in exactly the right town and had high praise for Bob before letting him take a well-earned rest so as to be refreshed for the return trip in the late afternoon. I should point out that I had suggested a sleep over to avoid travelling after dark. There's more than enough room and even though we had appointed the newly-licensed 18 year-old the designated driver we do not have a good track record of uneventful trips back from the Vaal in the dark. The last return trip involved a pot hole the size of a tank trap, a broken wheel rim and changing a tyre in the dark in a spot with no emergency lane just outside Sebokeng. I was outvoted on this, however, even though it later emerged that the vote was rigged, Mugabe-style (Brian's vote counts more than the others)
After lunch everyone went sailing (excluding my sister and me, of course, since I am fully aware that all boats have but one purpose: to take you to the bottom when you're least expecting it) We spent our afternoon in the pool at the yacht club with a glass or two of wine and waited for the family's return.
At six we climbed back into the luxury sedan and instructed Bob to take us home. Looking back, the first sign of trouble might have been the 15 minutes it took for him to find us and give us our first instructions. He seemed sluggish and didn't sound quite as confident as he had earlier. We foolishly ignored this, mistaking it for confirmation of our innate navigation skills. There was lots of cheer and singing, slightly sunburned well-fed happiness and a beautiful sunset to distract us so it's understandable that it took a while for us to realise that Bob had been silent for some time. It slowly dawned on us that we were alone in an unknown place with no landmarks or directions home.
It was dark and Bob had deserted us on a rural road in the middle of nowhere. The few signs we saw were of no help at all - and we hadn't packed a map, obviously, since we had Bob. There was an unusual silence in the car and the music was switched off to allow us all to concentrate.
After a while we spotted a sign to a town and decided our best bet was to head straight there and throw ourselves on the mercy of a garage attendant. This took some negotiation, since Brian is obviously a boy and obviously doesn't believe in asking for directions. He confidently predicted we would cross a highway shortly. After 30 minutes he agreed we should stop and ask. Fortunately we found both a garage and a kindly attendant who told us which street lead out of town to the nearest highway.
At this stage the 18 year-old took control, ignored the parents and directed the scientist to download Google maps, enter the name of the town and our destination and ask for directions. The scientist is, strangely enough, not tech-savvy so it took a while, but eventually we had a clear set of directions without any aid from satellites. I am fascinated that this is possible, albeit a little disturbed that an American search engine knows how to get me home from Meyerton.
The problem with directions, rather than voice guidance, is how non-specific they can be. Take the N12 offramp, then the N3. YES, BUT WHICH WAY? The intricate design of the interchange doesn't allow for hesitation - you need to be decisive and move quickly to avoid the thundering taxis and luxury 4x4's doing 140 in the 80 zone. All 3 of us were yelling conflicting instructions at once - and, apart from one or two near-death experiences involving unsafe lane changes, he managed to get onto a road we knew without panicking, shouting or throwing things at us. (Proud mother moment - that's my boy, keeping a cool head in a crisis)
We circumnavigated Johannesburg and arrived home 3 hours after leaving the Vaal to a dark house - the power had failed (or perhaps a cable was stolen) only to be restored 24 hours later. Bob had a long rest
Perhaps an analogue back-up system (a fold-out map comes to mind) is not a bad thing in this digital age.
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