Teaching Vacation: Uncle Jimmy

For a generation spread throughout the country, the Kerr clan stays close. We have reunions, keep track of major family events, and whenever we run into each other we talk nonstop catching everyone up.

I say “Kerr clan”, but more technically it’s the Kerr-Fleming clan. My paternal grandparents, Jack Kerr and Gladys Fleming, had six kids: Jack, Joan, Joel, Jeff, Jay, and Jim.* Jack Kerr was the only son of Nellie Stout Kerr, but Gladys was one of six kids and her parents, Paul Fleming and Mary Lewis Fleming (my greatgrandmother, Grammy Fleming), took in Paul’s brother George Fleming’s 5 children when George and his wife (also Mary) died in the Spanish Flu epidemic. So they raised 11 kids in total, including my grandmother Gladys, giving their descendants a bunch of great-aunts and uncles: Margaret, Melva, Bern, Bill, Evelyn, and others I apologize for forgetting.

Point being, it’s a big family. We have reunions where we talk up a storm: Jimmy’s 70th, Dad’s 80th, and the Grand Reunion of 2019. The Jack/Gladys Kerr siblings have always touched base on the phone regularly. My father and I spent three summer vacations together, and not a day went by he didn’t hear from at least one of his brothers or sister, just to shoot the shit. He talked to Jimmy daily. But downlevel of that, most of us only know what’s going on in our branch.

Except Uncle Jimmy. The youngest of Jack Kerr’s kids–closer in age to the oldest grandkids than he is to his oldest brother–Jimmy is the central cloud cluster of the Kerr-Fleming family communication network. Jimmy, along with his beloved wife Patti, stays in touch with everyone. 

So if you want to know what’s going on, or how to contact a first or second cousin, or when everyone’s going to be in town, Uncle Jimmy’s your first call.

Which is why, when I woke up in Des Moines on Friday morning and realized that my original goal, Cleveland, was just two hours from Pittsburgh, I texted the man himself. Was he around for a day or so? He was, and started giving me advice about which highways to take. This led to my first major episode of..

Arguing with Google Maps

I’m reliably informed that paper illustrations of geographic regions exist, showing highways and cities and connections. These documents are called “maps”. 

I’m not big on maps. They’re always folded weird. I’m not spatial, so I can’t translate up-down-left-right into north-south-east-west. It is perhaps unwise to try and decipher a map while driving a moving vehicle. In a world where ,maps remained the primary method of finding a route,  I would probably not be the roadtripper I’ve turned out to be.

Google Maps is generally great. Without it (as you shall see), I’m desperately lost. It is perhaps ungrateful of me to complain, so think of these as product design requests.

When you use google maps and enter a destination, you will often get the suggested route and, if they exist, alternate routes. Sometimes the difference is tolls, other times it’s mileage, other times, hey, who knows what the AI tells it to do?  On road trips, I usually take the scenic route, although not on this first cross country blitz. As my experience grew, I started opting for the non-toll route. 

One very irritating problem: for some reason, google would occasionally reroute me to what it thinks of as the optimal route without telling me. Normally, when Google does a route change (like, you miss a turn), it gives a sound as it “reroutes”. But sometimes it will change without mentioning it, and that’s incredibly frustrating, leading to a situation I call “arguing with Google”. What should happen–and often does–is the Maps app should give you a choice: “Hey, I found a faster route. Do you want it?” This is useful when you’re stuck in a traffic jam, or hey, google is just checking. Fine. But sometimes it will just decide to change you over without even a noise. Aggravating.

The only solution I’ve found is to override Google by entering a multiple-stop route, where all the stop are on the destination route of your choice. That is, I argue with Google by forcing it to accept my route.

So when Uncle Jim learned Google was sending me through on Interstate 80, he said “oh, honey, no. 70 is much quicker.”  But Google Maps didn’t even give me a Highway 70 option, taking me through on I80 all the way through to Cleveland. In fact, when I tried to “argue” with Google, going to Indianapolis and other cities on I70. But in this case, Google continually rerouted me back to 80. It was very frustrating. However, operating on the premise that Google Maps wouldn’t deliberately send me the long way, I finally did some short takes and learned that there was highway work being done on I70 so resigned, I went back to taking 80. Google might have been right this time, but it really was inexplicable, some of its decisions.

Taking I80 alerted me to the other New Thing I Learned About the East:

Where The Roads Aren’t Free

In the west, when Google tells me about tolls, it’s a bridge. California readers, let me alert you to an old concept: toll roads. 

It cost me TWENTY DOLLARS to drive across Ohio!! I was like wait, what the hell. And at least in Ohio (and Florida) they have toll collectors and accept credit cards. I later learned my car was getting charged for tolls I didn’t even know about (looking at you, Massachusetts and New Hampshire). I tried emailing toll boards asking for invoice numbers but got no response until I realized that for toll receipts, out of state travellers gone long from home and paying late are a feature, not a bug. More money that way.

As mentioned, I learned to tell Google to avoid tolls. And I should have taken Jimmy and later Betty Jo’s advice sooner and gotten an EZPASS, a transponder that automatically charges your account and is good in eighteen states. As it is, I’m resigned to paying a large fee, hopefully less than several hundred dollars,  when I return home and open the mail.

I will never see California gas prices as purely progressive nonsense again. Because by god, our roads are free. 

Fees aside, Friday was my second worst day of the first cross country trip, winning over Tuesday purely because of Uncle Jimmy’s constant checking in. “What would you like for dinner? Do you like fish?” and checking on my progress I used that Google Status option and sent him a link so he could track my location. 

Traffic was dreadful, far worse than Tuesday. I80 takes you right through Chicago, and the only plus side was that the Thornton Quarry my trucker acquaintance mentioned was just as splendid as he said, although pictures from the highway are tough:

I didn’t take either of these pictures. Mine would have looked like the one on the left, but I would have cropped it. Driving, it looked very much like the one on the left.

I wish I’d known that I was driving over this!

For that brief moment, I didn’t mind traffic. But generally, the trip that should have taken 11 hours took about 14. I didn’t get in until 8:30, having left at 6:30 am.

But at the end of it all was Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Patti:

and a lovely dinner of grilled cod and vegetables, along with….a bed! Which, much as I didn’t mind sleeping in the SUV, had much to recommend it.

Spent a wonderful Saturday relaxing and talking, and a great evening with Jimmy, Patti Aunt Barbara and Uncle Jay–so engaging that I forgot to take pictures! Jimmy and Jay had lots of advice for my upcoming trip to Cape Cod, as well as advice for my side route to Punxsutawney. 

And so, early Sunday, I went on my way again, promising to return.

*My father, Jeff, and mother, Rita, named their four Michele, Michael, Maggie, and Mark and my sister, Maggie and husband Bob, named their original three kids Brianna, Brenden, and Brett. I mean,  in case you were wondering. 

Next up: Teaching Vacation: 128 Perry Street