The Great Peach Expedition

Went on the annual pilgrimage down to Candor for peaches today. North Carolina has a region called the Sand Hills, which are the remnants of sand dunes from a previous coastline. The soil is great for growing peaches. However, with the off-shoring of so many things, including growing a lot of our food, the peach farmers are dying out. Also, after ten years the trees need to be pulled out and the soil rested because the tree roots get nematodes. For real. Anyway, once a year we try to make it down there for peaches.
This year Phil decided to ride his bike (bicycle) to Troy, about 60 miles south of here, the town where he grew up. My job was to pack lunch, a change of clothes for the sweaty rider, etc, and meet him at an obscure intersection in the middle of freaking nowhere. Driving the stick shift pickup truck. Now, I'm entirely competent to drive the truck. I can also read topo maps. However, even my excellent intellect finds it darned hard to do them both at the same time. Phil said it would take me "no more than 45 minutes" to reach this mythical spot on the map, the intersection of Lassiter Hill Rd and Piney Church Rd, bounded by woods and soybean fields and not a man-made artifact in sight. It took more like TWO HOURS, what with starting and stopping and getting lost and swearing at the GPS, which refused to acknowledge the existence of a single road on the map. Meanwhile I am picturing him dehydrated and comatose on the side of the road (the reason for meeting him being to switch out water and Gatorade bottles.) My cell phone never rang, so I pictured the worst.
Meanwhile..... picture the Sweaty Rider, pacing in the sun at the side of the road, convinced that his wife is dead in a car wreck, because she will not answer her phone and she is an hour late. Yep, my new cell phone was set for vibrate only---even though I was sure it was set to ring loudly--- and I never heard it buzz over the roar of the truck (rocketing through the countryside at increasingly unsafe speeds due to the frustration of being lost.)
When we finally caught up to each other, I was not graceful. I said many loud and unrepeatable things about this and that. Thankfully Phil is a calm, patient sort and did not take me seriously. We proceeded on, he rode to Troy, we drove to Candor and got a peck of wonderful peaches and a slathering of creamy homemade peach ice cream, and all was well.