It began with the age old question – what to have for dinner. I suggested chicken, but…from where? Maybe Canes, but Jim didn’t want to go all the way to Cuyahoga Falls for dinner. He decided to check the internet for suggestions.
I got ready to go while he was doing that and he narrowed it down to a few places – we eventually decided on KFC. While he was getting ready, I asked where there was a KFC and, a little puzzled, he asked me to look it up on my phone since he’d been looking at the menu and not the address.
“The closest one is in Cuyahoga Falls,” I said and he sighed – but I followed up with “Google says it’s only 5 miles away,”
“Really?” he said, “Seems like it would be farther than that, but I guess if we go through the valley…”
He trailed off as we put our coats on and we headed out the door. I did a search on the GPS and found the location – though the address number was maybe different than what I had remembered from google. It should be fine, right?
We headed down to Market street and the GPS took us to a couple of side streets before putting us on Sand Run road – though she pronounced it SANDRUNROAD. A little odd since you can get on Sand Run right from Market, but I commented that she’s gotten me out of some rough situations and I like to indulge her occasionally.
We went down Sand Run for a bit and then suddenly – with no warning we knew of – the road was closed. It was open to “local traffic”, but we had no way of knowing how far that would get us. The only option was to turn right.
The GPS recalculated quietly and kept trying to get us to turn around and head back to Sand Run. We kept looking for a spot to turn left and get back on track, but it’s the valley and there aren’t many options.
Eventually, the GPS decided we weren’t going to turn around and plotted a new route going forward. There was a lot of “turn left in .5 miles” and then “turn right in 300 feet”. Our “5 miles from home trip for chicken” seemed to take a lot longer – though we didn’t keep track.
At one point we had to make a left turn and then quickly get over into the right lane to make the next turn. The car in front just drifted on over – I quickly checked behind me, then gunned it to make it over as well.
“Did you cut that guy off?” JIm asked. “No,” I replied, “I looked, there was plenty of room,”
“In other words, you did cut that guy off, but we’ll let it go because you’re hungry,” he said.
Finally, we were in the valley and on more familiar ground as we made our way to Cuyahoga Falls and finally State street. I joked that we could just go to Donato’s and get pizza, but Jim insisted that we’d come all this way and we were damn well going to get chicken.
And then, KFC wasn’t there. The GPS was clear, but the building was closed and dark. Flustered, we kept going a bit while I looked for a place to turn around or at least stop and get our bearings – and it was suddenly up ahead.
They had moved to a new and better location – hence the discrepancy on the address – and we pulled in.
We both got the chicken tender meals with fries and biscuit – buffalo sauce for me and honey for Jim. We ate our meals and joked about the strange trip for our simple meal. The chicken and fries were really good and Jim ordered a Chicken Pot Pie to go for lunch tomorrow. As we got in the car to go I asked, warily,
“So, how do you want to handle this?”
“We’ll just follow her back and if she has us turn on Sand Run, we’ll just go down the next road,” JIm replied.
And then off we went. We back-tracked part of the way and then the GPS had us turn right on Sand Run Parkway. To the left, it was Road Closed. We speculated that we might have been able to get through after all, but we were both a bit turned around.
Neither of us spoke as we headed up the completely dark and deserted road – hoping the way through would work, but also irritated at how much time we had lost getting there if it was open far enough.
We rounded a corner and went up a slight hill and I had just enough time to see the sign “Ford impassable when…” and thought, “what if you aren’t driving a Ford?” when we suddenly drove through a stream that was running across the road.
There was some loud and colorful swearing involved – mostly me – but we made it through unscathed.
Slightly shaken, we continued on through the dark until we reached an intersection. Left was SANDRUNROAD – but it was closed. So, that answered the question. A right turn would take us further from home.
We went straight on through and the GPS quickly found a new route – which had us back on familiar streets again and home in no time.
Hell of a trip just to get chicken tenders. Remind me to tell you about the time we tried to go to Tom and Chee and it was closed forever.
It was good chicken, though.