Mom vs. Technology

The lightning continued through the night and Mom & Dad woke me up at 9:30 because they gave up on waiting for the rain to finish. The ceiling vent leaked all night so the laundry bag was soaked along with the corner of the seat. All of the bags got packed in the truck along with anything we didn’t want to get wet. We broke down camp and as we hooked it to the truck for Mom the rain stopped. I guess we won’t have to ride in the rain after all. On our way out of the park, we got a phone call from the local Fox news channel, wanting to set up an interview. Randy Rampola had made the arrangements for us. Thanks again Randy for all your work. We met up with a young reporter, Dave, about 15 miles into our morning’s trip so he could get some footage and interview each of us. He was jealous that my new job gave me all summer off where the station he worked for wanted him to start the day after graduation. He was also surprised that this was the first time we were interviewed for TV. Anyways, he told us that he was writing the story and it would be aired soon, depending on how much storm damage coverage they would be giving that night. Then we were back on the road towards Granger. We told Mom to go on ahead and to wait for us at South Bend so that we could reacquaint ourselves with the directions. Then, later on we got a panicked call, “I hate this lady. I don’t know where she wants me to go.” Mom is referring to the GPS” lady” and can’t follow the GPS directions. I guess it needs to be updated because there are a lot of new round-a-bouts (rotaries, traffic circles) where she is “recalculating” the route. Mom didn’t like that, so she eventually found a McDonalds to work on the computer at with WiFi. But she has little luck getting online by herself. So on the road I get phone calls about how the computer won’t work and the “Lady” is always recalculating. I can’t do anything about it on the bike so mom gives up and we eventually meet up and plan how to get to the Rampola’s for the night. Mom arrived at the house first guessing it was the house with the soccer ball out front and rang the doorbell, no answer. She waited a few minutes and walked around the house to find a car with an MV sticker on it, this must be the place. Back to the doorbell and there is movement, the dog starts barking. Still no other response so she guesses they are out for the moment. Shortly afterwards, Mary Ann arrives with 16 year old Emily at the wheel. She guessed Randy was asleep after a busy morning cutting up a limb that fell from the storm. When we arrived at their home and we noticed a theme. Over the last 13 years of renting our house on the Martha’s Vineyard, they have amassed quite the collection of MV items. We had a great dinner and talked until we realized that the 10:00 news was going to be on. We turned the TV on and shortly into the news we saw a short video promo of ourselves on the screen, and it’s said that our story would be on tomorrow night. Great! We’re actually going to be on the news. We know we’re going to be in a camp site Sunday night, but we were assured that the story would be posted on the website the morning after it airs. We are looking forward to seeing the final product and you can too, check out http://www.fox28.com/Global/story.asp?S=12866895 So even though neither Mom or Dad can figure out the GPS (looks like I’ll be doing even more driving than planned) it was a great day.
Ben