There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

I am officially documented! Yesterday Scottie and I went down to the good ol' passport support office in West Sacramento and they took all my fingerprints. I ahve to say, I was quite impressed with my bad ass skills at driving sans map and with Scottie as my co-pilot.

Not that I am dissing his navigational skillz, but the poor kid just can't really give directions. Thank Jebus I gave myself an hour to find the place! We started out early because Scottie wanted to find a Borders, thanks to having read all of his reading material at the ranch for lack of anything else to do here. The mystical shopping place was located somewhere just before Sacramento city, and I managed to get there, even with the signs being written in minescule lettering. After a brief lunch of Subway (where I told the dude Southwest Sauce and he gave me Sweet Onion...wha?) we were on our way.

"Okay, now do a U-Turn."
'No need, the U-turn was to get us onto Turxel, but they had a light there, so I did a left turn...don't worry, we're on Turxel now"
'Are you sure? No! You passed it, Truxel is down that way!"
"No, the signs correlate to direction...so if you see a road sign running parallel to the road you are on, then you are on that road...the signs that cross the road are for the streets that run perpendicular to the road you are on.'
"That makes no sense, American has crazy streets"
"No, dear, it works the same in the UK"
"No it doens't."

And it got worse from there.

"Okay, now turn onto Reed Ave."
"Already did that"
"What? When?"
"At that stop light. I turned left, quick, what are the next directions"
"Um, oh, you should have turned back there."
"What?!?! you're sure? Okay, let me find a place to U-Turn."

After pulling into where I was directed, we searched in vain for the passport building. 795, 800, 820, 830, 840- but no 825.
By now I was kinda freaking out because I really don't like being late for legal things, especially ones concerning my passport and visa. But we had a half hour. After searching in and searching, I finally asked to see the directions.

'Honey, the directions say to say on Reed, and that Reed veers to the left and becomes Riverside"
"Yeah, and you said you turned left. "
"Yes, but that was step 3. Step 4 is Reed veers to the left and becomes Riverside. We're not on Riverside. We need to go back onto Reed and stay on it until it turned into Riverside."
'Oh."

Internal head smacking and deep breathing ensued.

But in the end, it all worked out and I was literally in and out in 3 minutes- and that includes the bathroom break!

The next step was to find Old Town Sacramento. I had been there once when I was 10 on a school fieldtrip to the capitol, and I figured it would be a fun mini-trip to take Scottie to now that we were in the area. Trouble was, the directions were fracked. Google maps failed me, and after instrucing me to take Jefferson Blvd, it said to go straight. But Jefferson ended in a stoplight for left or right. I picked the left since there were loads of holiday flags on that side, and just wandered about. I figured that Sacramento couldn't be bigger than Santa Rosa, if even that size, and lo and behold, I ended up taking a ramp that led me right to Old Town parking. We wandered the wee shops along Old Town and had some Frozen youghurt before loading up on Jelly Bellys and Salt Water Taffy and heading back home. With no idea how to get home, we had to rely on my kick ass directions skills, and after only one wee mis-turn that had us heading towards Reno on 80, we managed to get back to the 5 and homewards. Whoot!!!

Moral of story: women drive and do better when they give themselves directions.