rogue navigation

So I was on my way to Ohio for a party and I left a smidge late. Well maybe it was more than a smidge but arriving at the party within fashionably late status was within my grasp. Well, it was, until I got stuck in crazy road construction half an hour after I left. Fortunately there were construction signs saying at what exit the lane closures actually started. Unfortunately the exit was far from where the very slow moving traffic started. So, I whipped out my map and noticed that there was another highway east of my current position. Unfortunately the map was not exactly a fine grained, detailed sort of map with all, or even most of the roads between my current position and the desired high speed motorway. Fortunately I have a compass in my car, which I calibrated myself. Thank you very much. So I decided to get off at the exit which was tantalizingly located only a few yards in front of my not moving bumper.
Quickly I was no longer stuck in construction traffic, and was moving rapidly eastwards. Or maybe it was southwards. The details are not important. What is important is that I worked my way slowly but sure easterly noticing but not paying much attention to the fact that there were fewer and fewer cars on my rear bumper and that the number of crossroads that were comprised in part of dirt roads was on the rise. Well eventually as often happens in life I was faced with the very thing that I had been doing my best to ignore. I came to a T and in order to consider traveling in an eastish/southish direction my only choice was to take the dirt road. Well that or follow Mr 'I drive a bmw and do important deals on my cell while following random jeeps across the countryside looking for interstates' who turned chicken and drove north on the paved road. (He may have been the only other car left that was in our caravan avoiding the construction but this is where the woman is separated from the mouse.) Well the whole point of this detour was to get to the party quicker, so I wasn't about to give in and drive the wrong direction (information I was easily able to gather given my dashboard mounted compass).
I know you are all on the edge of your seats so I won't keep you waiting any longer. A few more turns (on increasingly larger roads) and presto - non clogged highway at 2 o'clock. Coincidentally the final crucial turn was based on a town that was conveniently located on my coarse map. Perhaps also coincidentally but not surprisingly I was more than fashionably late to the party but all I missed was the salad course, which as we all know only serves to fill one up to prevent proper ingestion of dessert later on in the evening.
So I hope we all learned our lesson. No construction is beyond the power of a compass (and preferably a topological description of the local surroundings).