That's not entirely true.  I'm headed east...and I knew my first stop would be Cleveland, OH.

After wrapping up a team meeting to discuss changes to a project at ETA Cuisenaire, I turned on the GPS to find my way to Indiana.  Ron, the US Male GPS guy told me to turn south onto Fairway Drive.  It was the wrong direction, but I thought to go ahead--throwing caution to the wind sort of thing--it wasn't like I had a reason to believe Ron would ever lie to me.  When I hit the first stop light, Ron told me to go left, and then turn right.  Only...there was no street to turn right onto.  Liar.

And then, while telling Ron to get with the program the GPS window told me that the battery was low and that Ron was about to die.  In his impending doom, I'm assuming Ron was trying to drive me past a hospital.  My wife had given me the power cord for the GPS, but it only works on a cigarette lighter--and my car's electrical system has been out of whack for years.  (I haven't heard the radio in years...not sure if radio still exists.  My daughter tries to fill in the gaps for me on pop culture--who's *awesome* and who really, really sucks.  Lady Gaga, anyone?)  Anyway...Ron was dead and I had no way to revive him.  Since he lied to me, I shouldn't have cared much, but I did.

And, geek that I am, I had a techie solution.  While driving along 94, I fished my laptop out of my computer bag, flipped it open and powered it up.  Then I fished out the USB cable for my external hard drive and connected Ron to my laptop, and boom, Ron was on life support.  Traffic couldn't decide if it wanted to move or stay still, just as the sun couldn't decide to shine or hide behind the clouds.  By the time both had made up their minds, Ron found me in Indiana, and the sun was already settling in for the evening.

I settled in at a Days Inn, where the free wi-fi internet connection didn't work, but had a room that was cheap and clean.  I called the tech support group that manages the network here and after speaking some time with me and helping him troubleshoot the problem, he assumed I actually worked here at the hotel.  After we had determined that three of the four wireless acess points needed a hard reboot, Joe, the tech support, said he needed for me to power off and restart the access points located in the attic of building two.  "OK, Joe, I'll get right on it."  I then went to the front desk and told them what they needed to do in order to restore their wi-fi service.  They looked at me the way non-techies' do when you give just a little too much jargon...like a deer in the headlights of a semi, silently pleading to be put out its misery.  Deer, of course, aren't pleading for anything, they just want to make sense of the strange lights and sounds.  Non-techies, however, are desperately pleading for the semi to either go away, or run them over...anything to make the techie-jargon stop.

I went to bed without checking my email...figuring that's what the universe must want me to do.