Victor Famblee Practice

(Compliments of Google.)

“Fat lotta help this thing was,” I said regarding my iPhone’s GPS.
The other day Yrs Trly had a medical appointment at Victor Family Practice in Victor, NY; about 11 miles north of where I live.
Victor is an old farm town taken over by hot-shot developers happy to rape taxpayers in the name of jobs-jobs-jobs.
Victor is now more-or-less a Rochester suburb.
Glitzy abandoned startups clutter the surrounding landscape. Some succeeded.
The first railroad into Rochester from the east skirts Victor to the south. It was built in the 1830s, and is long abandoned.
Lehigh Valley Railroad’s Buffalo Extension went right through Victor. It was an attempt by Lehigh Valley to become a bridge-line after the market for anthracite coal began faltering.
Lehigh Valley’s Black Diamond Express, Buffalo to New York City, went through Victor. LV’s Buffalo Extension was one of the best engineered railroads through its terrain, which was somewhat challenging.
The Buffalo Extension is now abandoned, and only a short segment remains: trackage into Victor operated by Finger-Lakes Railway.
Victor also had an electrified interurban line, Rochester to Syracuse or Canandaigua, I never knew which.
Victor has one major industry, Victor Insulators. It had railroad service on that first line to Rochester.
Now a connector has been built to get from what remained of LV’s Buffalo Extension up to the railroad past Victor Insulators. It was built by tiny Ontario Central. OC had originally owned the remainder of LV’s Buffalo Extension into Victor, but was taken over by Finger Lakes in 2007.
So now Victor is a jumble of development heaped here-and-there.
Victor Family Practice is located in downtown Victor amidst the jumble.
I knew how to drive to Victor, but had no idea how to find Victor Family Practice.
I decided to use my iPhone’s GoogleMaps GPS app.
Leaving my house I fired it up.
WHOA! It’s still mired in south FL showing me how to get from Fort Lauderdale Airport to my niece’s house.
It of course wasn’t doing what I expected, from “my location” to “Victor Family Practice.”
After a lotta stabbing around, and trial-and-error, while I’m trying to drive, I gave up.
I could get to Victor; after that was finding Victor Family Practice. I had earlier previewed the location in satellite-views.
But as I entered Victor, streets weren’t as earlier previewed — or so it seemed.
The old Lehigh Valley, which I hadn’t seen in satellite-views, was almost right next to State Route 96, the main east-west drag through Victor. My earlier preview indicated an east-west street just south of 96, parallel to the railroad.
It was named “Adams Street.” Next to the railroad was “Railroad Street.
Around the block I went. I pulled off next to Victor’s post-office, no longer downtown, to call Victor Family Practice.
To do that I hafta turn off Bluetooth, since my car’s Microsoft Sync likes to muck up.
Undo seatbelt, unholster iPhone from back pocket; fiddle off Bluetooth = at least a minute, while angry geezers shake their fists and blow their horns.
I’m way off the pavement with my four-ways flashing.
(Not made up, readers.)
It was about 1:15; Victor Family Practice is closed from 12:30 to 1:30 for lunch. My appointment was at 1:30.
Finally I drove up to 96, still looking for “Adams.”
I turned east, but noticed a tiny sign for Victor Family Practice.
I turned toward it, into a jumble of buildings plunked willy-nilly. One was signed “Victor Family Practice,” attached to a pharmacy, part of “Mead Square Development” (the drug-store was “Mead”).
I parked and went inside the building: tax-services, investment advisors, real-estate, and Victor Family Practice off to the side.
Don’t know as GPS woulda done me any good, but it mighta got me to elusive “Adams Street,” which I found on the way out.
Engage iPhone settings later at home. Permit GoogleMaps to access “my location” so it can crank that into the app.
I’m supposed to do all this without driving into the weeds?
Quite often I get unfathomable surprises from my iPhone.
If it weren’t for the fact I already know my way to Victor, I woulda had to pull over.
GPS is wondrous technology, but always seems to require human input.
How many times have I told the GPS-lady to shaddup? Or, “What you been smokin’, girl?”
And why does GoogleMaps have my house 500 feet south of where it actually is?
Every time someone is coming to my house via GoogleMaps, I hafta inform them.