My New Best Friend
Well, not really, but if you’re ever traveling alone on the road in an unfamiliar area, a GPS might be the next best thing. I never had a lot of use for these until I was sent on a business trip last month, under duress, to an area I knew nothing about. I didn’t have a friend in the damn state. I was under a lot of pressure, having been sent on Mission Impossible #5,842, and the business objective was hard enough, let alone trying to figure out how to get to multiple destinations in relatively short time.
Enterprise Car Rental offered this GPS thing for a few extra bucks a day. I figured I’d try it. Other than the window-cup failing and the silly thing bouncing off the dashboard every 50 miles or so, it was great. I finally learned to shove the sucker down between the lowest part of the windshield and the dash, and it more or less stayed put.
The GPS was fairly reliable, except if you missed a scheduled turn. Then it had an unholy fit. It would commence with crazy instructions in a desperate attempt to get you to turn around and take THE route it wanted you to take. But other than a serious disagreement I had with it regarding a toll road, we got along fine.
Plus, it talked to me. “Turn left in one-point-three miles. Turn left. Turn left…..turn left now. Continue for twenty miles. Blah blah. Ding. Tweet. Chirp.”
I was so freakin’ lonely on this business trip, I welcomed the impersonal babbling of the GPS’s voice. I would find myself answering it out loud, with things like, “You got it!” “That’s a big 10-4! Okay, if it makes you happy, I’ll take that road!”
This alternated with the occassional, “Shaddap!!” when I knew it was just being stubborn about avoiding the tollways.
I have to admit I got used to hearing the thing make endless, inane travel suggestions, even if I ignored half of them just to hear it urge me frantically to make a U-turn. It seemed to get upset if it thought I was lost. I kept expecting it to tell me to pull into a gas station and ask for directions, but apparently it had more pride than I did.
The GPS was worth the experiment. The verbal prompts and the on-screen map allowed me to keep more of my attention on the traffic, instead of trying to glance over to a paper map and find out where the hell my next road was, and try to figure out how far I was from it, when I had to change lanes, ect. Anyone who’s ever tried to read road signs in rush hour traffic in an unfamilair big city, will know what I’m talking about.
