From 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.
The Sightseer
TomTom came fully loaded: route planning, traffic and weather alerts, and an optional warning when I'm exceeding the speed limit. I declined the latter, as my car was already equipped with that feature. It's called Jennifer.TomTom also let me choose a celebrity voice to give me directions. I passed on John Cleese because when you've made a wrong turn, the last thing you want is to be berated by your navigational system. It struck me as odd -- not to mention dangerous -- to be taking driving tips from Gary Busey, so I nixed him. The same went for Mr. T. Listening to his voice for two hours would have resulted in my driving over a cliff.
Of the nonceleb voices, Sylvie had a come-hither-to-yon-destination bedroom voice, while Mandy's bland, nonconfrontational demeanor reminded us of everyone's second-favorite aunt. We went with Mandy.
We were now prepared to put TomTom to the test on a trip that would take us from Jennifer's mother's home in Rochester, New York, to my sister's in Ithaca, two hours and six minutes away. I tapped the coordinates (a fancy term for addresses) on the NAV's touch screen, which, since I was able to do it, means it was pretty easy. Seeing the colorful screen come alive, our four-year-old, Quinn, assumed it was a small TV. "Hannah Montana!" she shouted.
"No, upstate New York," I corrected. With bags packed and car humming, we put our trip in Mandy's hands.
At the first intersection, Mandy promptly intoned, "Turn right." "Aren't we supposed to turn left?" Jennifer asked.
We were already lost. We'd made this trip dozens of times, and this was not our normal route.
"Maybe she knows a better way," I said, making the right turn.
"Here's the highway," Jennifer said.
"That's someone's house."
"Are you sure?"
"Have you ever seen a highway ramp with a mailbox?" It is this sort of helpful navigation that convinced me to get a GPS system.
"In a quarter-mile, turn left. ... In 125 yards, turn left," said Mandy. "Turn left." Maybe because Mandy's not much of a conversationalist, Quinn put in another request for Hannah Montana.
"Do you know where we're going?" asked Jennifer.
"Not a clue, but it's pretty," I said.
Mandy, it appears, is a bit of a sightseer. Rather than have us take 390 to 90, as I had assumed, she had us toodling through bucolic Pittsford. It then dawned on me that when I input my preferences, I'd opted for the cheapskate route, skipping all tolls, something we'd never done before. Mandy was saving me money. If we could just skip 372 more tolls, she would pay for herself. I was fully prepared to forget all about the coquettish Sylvie when Mandy grew quiet. Too quiet.
Taking Charge
"I think that's a flaw," said Jennifer. "Mandy should be making encouraging remarks all along, just to assure us that she's still on the job. Things like 'You're on the right track' and 'What a smooth ride this is.'""In half a mile, turn right." Mandy was back in the game!
"In 125 yards, turn right. ... In 50 yards, turn right. ... Turn right."
I turned left. I am sometimes susceptible to the same Right Shoe, Left Foot syndrome Quinn suffers from, and in this instance, I put on my left shoe when I needed my right. Mandy was confused. She didn't know where we were and had to ad-lib.
"I've never heard a computer say 'Uhhh ...' before," said Jennifer.
"Let Mandy get her bearings."
"Hannah Montana!"
"Turn left, then right," said Mandy with a forcefulness we'd not known. "Take the second left." I did exactly as I was told and turned right into a Home Depot parking lot.
What she'd meant was the left after Home Depot. This seems to be a growing problem -- idiots like me taking our directives literally. In Germany, a man followed the command "Turn right now" 30 yards before the intended junction. He drove his 4 x 4 onto a building site, up a stairway and into a porta potty. Another guy plowed into a pile of sand on a highway after trusting his GPS more than a Closed for Construction sign.
Getting out of Home Depot was hungry work, so I tapped the NAV's screen until I got to a cool feature -- Points of Interest. Some taps later and, voilà, a list of restaurants in the area appeared. You can also find gas stations, hotels, even a hospital, which was good, since while I was punching away at the tiny keyboard, I almost punched us into the back of a Toyota parked at a red light.
The jury is out on just how safe GPS devices are -- there are no major studies proving one way or the other. But common sense suggests that Mandy telling me where to go saves me from fumbling with cumbersome maps. On the other hand, human nature being what it is, why watch the road when I can watch my progress on the small, colorful screen, or surf the NAV for the area's best French cruller? Other systems offer voice recognition, which means you don't have to tap anything. Simply say in a loud, clear voice, "Find cruller," then Mandy tells you how to get there.
"You have reached your destination," said Mandy, sounding as relieved as we were to pull into my sister's driveway. It took us two hours and 13 minutes, seven minutes longer than if we'd taken the toll routes.
Frankly, a map would've also gotten us to Ithaca, and for $495 less. But I did appreciate how Mandy took charge when I got lost, and who knows, maybe in the future we'll use a GPS for everything. Like finding that golf ball I launched into the forest, showing me how to bypass the scented soaps aisle in the supermarket, or pointing out to this dim father just who Hannah Montana is.