Road Trip

A GPS takes a technological ignoramus for a ride.

More on:

• Family Safety
• Family Travel

Global Positioning System

Men, goes the old chestnut, will drive to Minsk before stopping to ask for directions to the corner store. Not me -- I'll burn rocks in the form of SOS on the hood of my car rather than get lost. And lost in a car is where you'll usually find me. See, I have this problem: If I ask someone for directions and they're longer than "It's over there," I zone out. Case in point, on a family trip last year, I stopped and asked a gentleman for directions. As we drove away, I turned to my wife, Jennifer. "Did you notice his teeth?"

"You didn't listen to a word he said, did you?" she asked.

"Not a one. I was looking at his teeth. Both of them were yellow, curry color, actually."

"So we're still lost."

"Yes."

Well, my wandering days are over, for I am now the proud owner of a TomTom One Global Positioning System!

"A what?" asked Jennifer.

"A GPS, a NAV, a little thingy that uses satellites to get us from point A to point B without having to stop and ask strangers."

Jennifer doubted I could master such a complex piece of machinery. "You can't even get the time stamp off our photos," I was reminded. She had a point. Every photo we take is dated February 12, 1983 (the year, it so happens, that camera manufacturers figured out how to put the red dot in everyone's eyes). Now obviously, I'm not the first person to use a GPS. They've been around a few years. But this was a pretty big leap for me, a charter member of the Rand McNally fan club.

It's not that I'm a technological ignoramus, as the guy in IT insists. I'm a "Tech-no," which means I'm a technological ignoramus by choice. But I don't want to become an anachronism, so I vowed to kick the tires on new technology.

The first thing I did was buy a SpinBrush for my teeth. I then downloaded songs onto an iPod. (Have you heard of these things? You input music into them, then spend the rest of the day trying to keep the earpieces from falling out of your ear.) Now it was on to the GPS. If I'm going to get lost, I want to be able to blame it on an expensive piece of machinery.

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Have you ever taken a road trip?

Yes. I love getting behind the wheel to see the U.S.A. No. Spending hours in a car is not my idea of a vacation.

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