Boomer and I got lost yesterday while going to work in Dawsonville a different way. I had taken part of the day off to do a job interview, as well as to view a few prospects for properties and house mates for my move back to Kennesaw.
Into TomTom I plug in my work address, since I was arriving from a different point of origin than I usually do.
The planned route took me on a beautiful scenic view of the snow-covered mountain roads of Jasper, GA. Coming out of the mountain curves, I was taken past several farms, and even an old Tyson chicken farm!
Not one mile from my destination, the road turned to gravel. Slightly peculiar, but that didn't cause me to worry, since I had never really traveled down the roads on the OTHER side of the restaurant.
"You have reached your destination." chimes the TomTom. As I take a quick look around, there is a barn on one side of the road and a cow pasture on the other. It's apparent that something was amiss.
Seeing that I was still on the right road, I decided to venture a little bit further.
Then the road drops off.
Boomer stops in her tracks, pausing at the end of the asphalt. Chugging quietly, she hesitates, looking over the unpaved mud and snow-covered trail, apparently pondering whether or not the trail ahead holds any dangers she can't handle.
Onward we trek, padding through the light snowfall, taking great care to avoid any hazards that the ill-equipped SUV might trip over. As the snow gets a little deeper, I speed up, hoping that my quicker pace will avoid our getting stuck.
The path takes a turn for the worse, as we cross deep ruts that can only be explained by the lumbering tromp of a logging truck. Faster!
Boomer whines, and it's clear to me now that this is not going to be getting any better. But my fear is that I would most CERTAINLY get stuck if I were to stop and try to double-back. FASTER!
Boomer and I are now screaming down the trail, bouncing across the truck ruts and splashing through deep mud puddles, dodging the deeper ruts as best we could, shooting out plumes of mud across both sides of the car, and the both of us wondering what to do if we were to get stuck.
We didn't have to wonder for long.
Still chugging along at a good clip we came to a hitch in our brashly-hashed plan. Not far ahead was a hill, covered in an almost serene, pristinely-spread powder. Don't stop. If nothing else was going to get me up that hill, it was going to be momentum.
As we plow up the hill, we drastically lose our speed, coming to a halt nearly immediately. This is quite obviously the end of our trek.
Backing down the hill, I try to maneuver down the trail, only to realize that my own ruts have made it increasingly harder to control my direction. BOOMP! Right into the brush. Trying to pull back forwards, I have no traction. 'I hope that brush isn't too thick', I think to myself, as I crank the wheel hard to the left and back straight over the bush. CLUNK. Thank goodness for the underbody protection.
As I back up, I whip the wheel around the other direction and spin the nose around in a spray of mud. It wasn't much longer until Boomer got bogged down in a rut that she, herself, made on the way up. I dropped her into 1st gear, and the tires spun instantly. I tried to be easier on the throttle, but it was still too much. I then started her in 2nd, figuring that I could ease out if I didn't have so much torque. Revved to 1100RPMs...1200...1300...1400....instant wheelspin.
Running out of ideas, I tried rocking the car, only to end up getting stuck deeper in the mud. To make things worse, I was smelling burning rubber from my tires. I can't imagine wonderful things were happening under the hood, either.
In a last ditch (haha) effort, I tried one last time to get out of the rut by rocking the car with the wheels turned. With a healthy rev and a sling of mud across the hood, it was just BARELY enough traction for Boomer to pull loose!
We tore off back the way we came, even faster than before, bouncing, splashing and howling all the way back, not concerned about avoiding ditches, only thinking about keeping up enough speed to get back to the paved road.
With a brief tire squeal, Boomer's tires found purchase on the edge of the asphalt as we climbed out of the mud bog.
I stopped in the middle of the road, and got out to check that I hadn't caused any serious damage. Boomer was dirty from bonnet-to-boot, but she hadn't suffered any visible damage.
Slightly white-knuckled as I got back behind the wheel, I looked at the mud that somehow made it's way into my car on both sides, apparently getting past the rubber door seals and resting in a small puddle at my feet.
A peculiar vibration shuddered slightly though the car as we motored down the road, almost as if Boomer HERSELF was trembling after the ordeal, something that she was most certainly NOT built for. We must have knocked a wheel balance loose in our hasty attempt at an escape.
And so starts our vendetta against TomTom and his TomTom-foolery...
