Weekend Round Up and Killer GPS

In case you happen to be one of the two remaining people in the Western Hemisphere that I haven’t personally emailed, Butters pulled off a hat trick on Sunday – Best Puppy, Best of Winners and Best of Breed. She behaved beautifully for her handler, Kay Reil of Bramstoke Bullmastiffs, and in Kay’s own words “Didn’t put a foot wrong”. Sarah, daughter of Butters’ co owner Paula, handled Butters on Saturday, and did a wonderful job as well, but the extra day of practice really paid off, and Butters shone on Sunday.

Kay said it was amusing to see her toddling around the group ring in the middle of all those big, polished, adult show dogs – Like a little Miss Sunshine pageant winner who’d wandered on stage at the Miss American pageant. I didn’t get any video footage, but I’ve been told that someone else did, so I’ll put it up as soon as I get a chance. In the meantime, you’ll find some photos of Butters in the group ring on Sunday here.

Now that show season is in full swing again, I’m going to start doing a Monday show results round up posting. More details to come.

In other news, I must sadly report that my GPS unit is officially trying to kill me.

I spend a lot of time cursing at and arguing with my GPS. I’m fairly certain it is both capricious in its choice of routes, and occasionally malicious in its sense of humor, and it’s not unusual for me to tell it to shut the hell up when it’s telling me to take some patently stupid route that makes no sense whatsoever. Sean, on the other hand, dotes on our GPS. He never argues with it, he follows its routes to the letter, and I strongly suspect he pets it from time to time. Long story short, I think that the GPS has decided to kill me, so that it and Sean can be together forever.

This weekend, on the way home from Tillsonburg, the GPS unit had me get off of Highway 401, and onto highway 2 – and then it immediately instructed me to do a U TURN.

In the middle of Highway 2.

Sarah was there and can confirm it – she was more disturbed by it than I was. The GPS then told us to get back on the 401 – timing it just so that we had to merge in the middle of a lane full of tractor trailers. Well played, GPS unit – but I’ve been driving for a long time, and no mere highway merge is enough to do in someone who has driven on the Danforth during rush hour.

Regrouping, the GPS unit decide to take a different approach – one with no witnesses.

Driving home from dropping off Sarah on a route I’ve done a hundred times before, the GPS unit suggested that I should take a different side road than the one I usually take. Still unsuspecting, I complied – and ten minutes later, found myself smack in the middle of a summer road that had narrowed down to a snow covered track.

In case you don’t have them where you are, a ‘summer road’ is a road that’s only passable in the summer (if then). There’s no winter maintenance done on it – no plowing, no re surfacing, no maintenance at all. It’s usually just a dirt track, used by riders, mountain bikers and snowmobilers in summer. This one was two feet deep in snow that was sitting on a bed of soft mud, and so narrow that branches were brushing my windows. No room to turn around, and a quick look at the seat beside me confirmed it – no cell phone service. If I got stuck here, I was well and truly screwed.

Thankfully, my little Honda Element has decent four wheel drive. I stuck it in low gear, put it in reverse, and crossed my fingers. By the time I’d made it back out, my hands were shaking, and I’m fairly certain that my GPS unit chuckled in its eerie, robotic voice. I resisted the urge to throw it out of the window and deep into the woods, but just barely.

“Coincidence” Sean insisted when I told him about it. “Coincidence, or else you just imagined it”. I managed to resist the urge to throw Sean out of a window, just barely, and decided that maybe he had a point. Who ever heard of a killer GPS unit?

Then yesterday, after dropping Butters’ off at Paula’s house, the GPS unit suggested once again that I should take the summer road. “C’mon” I imagined it saying. “Think of it as an adventure.. and then Sean and I can be together, without your interference…hahahaHAHA!”.

I’m not taking any more chances – I’ve got it soaking in a bucket of Holy Water, just in case. That’ll teach it.