What a week it has been. Stayed with some great friends in Bakersfield and Sacramento in the US. We are now in McPherson the day after our son’s Graduation.

Getting here wasn’t so easy.

Let me explain.

We landed in Wichita a little late and then proceeded to pick up our hire car to drive an hour to McPherson.

Not knowing the area, we asked the Avis sales guy for directions. He gave us this A4 printed sheet of paper that was the map of Wichita.

It was 8:30pm and darkness was setting in.

Hopped into the hire car, started it up and hit the “Navigation” button. It was not available.

WTF. A brand new car with no navigation!

Back to the hard copy map.

We thought about our mobile phones. 

We didn’t think we would need to get a US sim card as were constantly using wi-fi.

Wrong.

We followed the highway number for a while and then the freeway split in two with the same number going both ways.

We took the wrong branch and quickly became lost.

So, here we were. On a freeway, at night, in a city we had never been to and driving a left-hand drive car on the right hand side of the road!

We eventually got off the freeway and found a service station. Julie explained to a very sympathetic tradesman we were lost and he kindly helped us. He even suggested we follow him and he took us a mile back to the right freeway.

It was around 10:30pm when we arrived at McPherson.

Why am I telling you all this?

Great question.

At times through life, you will be placed in a stressful situation. Things will not work out as you may have planned.

It’s what you do about it.

We simply asked for help and trusted it would all work out.

Next time, we will be wiser. We will purchase a sim card for our phone with unlimited data so we have access to maps and can call people. We will also enquire when we book whether the hire car has navigation.

Going from a right-hand drive vehicle to a left-hand drive is very challenging – especially remembering where you have to be when doing right hand turns? And at night.

The good news. We got there. Driving is now much easier.

No matter what is happening, we always get through it.