Navigation at a Distance

My friend Anrahyah picked up her son at the Denver airport last evening, and they headed for Colorado Springs with the idea of dodging the worst of a coming storm, while also finding a place for the night. She'd been awake since four in the morning, and it would have been around five hours home. Buddy the dog was along.

I was concerned about them, and they kindly checked in with me from Castle Rock, which is south of Denver toward the Springs. And then again from Colorado Springs. At that time, Anrahyah asked me to go online and find them a Motel 6 she thought existed in that part of town. This chain is dog-friendly. I said I'd call back to her borrowed cell phone.

Finding a Motel 6 online was harder than I anticipated. I kept getting lists of many kinds of hotels, mostly expensive ones. Fortunately, one of those lists yielded the sought-after establishment, together with confirmation that the place was dog-friendly.

There was a map online, but it wasn't detailed enough to show the names of smaller streets. But when I called Anrahyah back, she was just passing the street on which the motel was! She turned around.

She'd already been down that street, but it had looked unpromising. However, I could see on my computer screen where it went. We hung up, because she needed to drive her car. A few minutes later, my phone rang.

"We scored!" she said. Just what she needed, with no more energy to have driven anywhere else that night. 17 hours of wakefulness takes a toll.

Online mapping and cells phones to the rescue! My small part in this felt good.