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By Emma Miskew

There is a lot of time spent in cars when you’re an athlete. Whether it’s on a road trip to an event or picking up a rental car after flying into a new city, we do a lot of driving around in cities we don’t know.

I’m going to start off by saying that I am, and have always been, the team driver. The rule is that someone else has to take on the navigating responsibilities — and even with a GPS we seem to have struggled to get ourselves around!

Here are some things we’ve learned in the car over the past few years:

1. When you have someone driving in the car with you who seems to know where to go without using a GPS, listen to what this person has to say

One event we’ve participated in many times is the Shorty Jenkins Classic in Brockville, Ont., which is only about an hour’s drive away from our hometown of Ottawa. Depending on the draw we get in this event, we can sometimes travel back and forth from home instead of staying in a hotel.

A few years ago, we decided at the last minute to book a hotel on a travel site and started to head there after our game so we could check in before our next. Rachel brought up her GPS on her phone which we followed for about 15 minutes until arriving at our destination, which appeared to be a church, not a hotel. Obviously this was not where we would be staying, so we updated the GPS on Rachel’s phone and it pinned another location and we were on our way.

My mom happened to be in the vehicle with us, and as we were coming up to a particular exit, she let us know that she thought it was the exit where the hotel was located. How could she know more than technology? Not possible … so we disregarded her advice and kept driving.

After heading almost halfway back to Ottawa, Rachel decided to call the hotel to find out where it was and as it turned it out, it was obviously the exit my mom suggested we take. Oops!

2. Never trust your phone GPS to bring you to the right place in Brockville

A couple of years later we were back in Brockville and were recommended a good restaurant to go to for breakfast.

We were all in different cars given that our families were there, so I looked up the address and texted it to Rachel … turns out that putting this address into our GPS brought us to the SAME church as the one we arrived at when we were looking for our hotel a couple of years earlier!

I’m not sure how much this church paid these phone GPS’s to bring everyone to them, but it made for a good laugh.

3. When you have a long drive from the rink back to where you’re staying, don’t get cocky and say the GPS is no longer needed, especially late at night

As most of you know, Earle Morris was our coach for many years. A couple of seasons ago, his son John offered to have us stay at his place during one of our events.

He was a bit outside of town, and for the first few trips back and forth, I wanted to have the GPS on to make sure I didn’t take any wrong turns.

A couple of days in, I thought I knew exactly where I was going so I told the team I didn’t need the GPS anymore and to give me some credit that I obviously would remember where to go. After a night game while we were having our game debrief in the car, I missed an exit to switch highways somewhere along the drive, only realizing it quite a bit later.

To get back, Earle turned on his GPS, which kept telling us to turn left, straight into farm fields.

I honestly don’t remember how we arrived, but I do know this little detour ended up costing us over an hour’s time!

4. If your phone GPS is telling you it’s going to take 20 minutes to drive to a Starbucks in any city, get a second opinion before starting that trip.

More recently, in St. John’s, N.L., for the Pinty’s GSOC event, we were trying to find a Starbucks near the airport to get us some coffees before heading home. Rachel has been to St. John’s many times and said she thought there was a Starbucks close to the airport, so Joanne got out her phone to navigate us.

After zigzagging through what felt like all of St. John’s, we ended up “arriving at our destination”, which was not a Starbucks, but a retirement home.

The best part was that a few minutes before arriving, we could all tell that this did not look like a promising location for a Starbucks, but Joanne was set on the fact that it was just around the corner!

Turns out the Starbucks was actually less than five minutes from the airport … but on the bright side we got a good tour of the city!