You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
GPS
Global Positioning Satellite.
In 300 feet make a U turn.
I’m in a city I don’t know well. It’s dark. The streets are unfamiliar. I just need to find the interstate so I can get where I need to go.
But the question is where am I? I don’t know the streets or the city. I’m lost like Brittany Spears in chemistry class.
Traffic lights are blinking yellow and red. Street signs are dimly illuminated. There’s a thin mist on my windshield causing streaks to rainbow against the glass.
I’m disoriented and frazzled. All I need is a house to fall on me in a tornado and my night will be complete.
I punch in my final destination and wait for the little hour glass to quit spinning.
The female voice that eminates from the little square is pleasing enough.
“In 2 tenths of a mile turn right.”
OK. I don’t recognize the street she suggests, but she must know what she’s talking about right? I mean she has the telemetry. It’s her job.
“In 3 tenths of a mile turn right,” she says, her voice guiding me forward.
I look at her street suggestion. Martin Luther King Blvd.
Man this can’t be right, I think to myself.
In 1 tenth of a mile turn left.
Black Panther Blvd.
This is bad.
My internal telemetry tells me the interstate is in the opposite direction.
Nothing good ever happens on MLK and Black Panther Blvd after dark.
I am nervous and wish I was packing my pistol.
I scan the darkness around me. I have a poor sense of direction, but I know the interstate is not near this check cashing place / discount liquor store.
I’m playing pin the tail on the donkey in a dark closet letting a dash board computer guide me to my death.
I am anxious. I have seen this little GPS bitch do this before. She thinks the shortest route is a straight line regardless if it is through a a cow pasture over a mountain or through a drive by shooting.
I feel a lump of nervousness pulse through my chest.
“This isn’t right!,” I say out loud.
My brain’s GPS and the mechanical voice on my dashboard are now in conflict like Katie Holmes and the Church of Scientology.
Turn left. Turn right. This crazy wench is zig zagging me into a crack deal, I just know it.
I don’t trust her. She has been sketchy lately. Maybe her digital brain got a sun flare and she’s short circuiting.
My GPS is outdated. It’s driving me on data that is more than 2 years old.
Entire subdivisions have been built since my GPS was updated. Some of these homes have burned down, fallen into sink holes the size of Jupiter and been wiped clean by tornadoes and my GPS doesn’t see this place.
My little GPS indicates I am moving north driving through a field of purple. It’s as if I am driving on the dark side of the moon.
This is why I don’t trust this piece of technology.
So what do I do in this new millennium of information? Do I pull over? Do I ask some Mapco slob for directions.
Nope.
I do what people in the new millennium do. I add more technology to the mix.
I pull out my iphone and plug in the navigation app that I just installed. I put in my final destination. I think I see the crackle of gunfire in the distance. Hurry up i think to myself.
“Turn Left in 200 feet and pick me up a forty” my dashboard GPS spews.
The inside of my little SUV is glowing like I am sitting on a pound of kryptonite. My face is being irradiated by swirling purple iphone graphics.
Suddenly I have a problem. In 3 tenths of a mile, my dashboard GPS wants me to go left, and my iphone navigation computer wants me to go right.
“Ro Ro.” Scooby Doo. What to do?
I get to the blinking red light and stop.
“What the f….,” I yell banging the steering wheel.
Neither road feels right. Somehow I need to get on the interstate which feels like it should be straight ahead, in the distance, beyond the mist on my windshield.
I sit there and stare at the 2 illuminated maps burning my eyes. Each GPS singing me a sirens song, imploring me to do what it beckons.
Some where the Greek God of on board navigation is laughing at me as he sits on his Mount Olympus throne and drinks his fruity nectar wine.
Just then my rear view mirror is filled with the head lights of another motorist.
My time to make a decision just shrank considerably. The driver behind me is anxiously wondering why I am sitting at a blinking red light.
The dashboard says go left. I look left. All I see is darkness and anger and crack deals gone bad. The iphone wants me to go right. I look right. It is a black hole of interminable misery.
F it, I scream as I drive forward.
Both GPS computers begin screaming, re-calculating. Re-calculating. It is like having 2 ex wives in the car. It is unsettling and I want to throw both tecnhologies into the street.
I look at the moon shining through a dark storm cloud.
How did Columbus do it? He certainly didn’t let 2 angry women influence his navigational computations. If he did, the Native Americans would be running this country.
I drive through another light and both navigation computers are seemingly ok with this route.
Then, in the distance, I see the oasis of my thirsty dreams.
It’s the interstate. I see trucks and cars whiz by.
I get into the left turn lane to go south.
Both computers shriek. Make a right turn in 100 feet.
again, I am confused.
Right turn? WTF?
That will take me to Nashville, I think.
Both computers want me to drive north to Mashville so I can go around the loop and then swoop south on another interstate.
Crazy.
I turn left and head in the opposite direction.
Recalculating. Recalculating. Recalculating.
I turn the radio up as loud as possible to drown out the navigational voices.
I get on the interstate and drive South. Suddenly, both GPS computers calm down and tell me to drive confidently forward.
I now know where I am. I feel confidence, and I am angry at the GPS idiots that tried to get me to buy crack and hookers.
On ramp in 3 tenths of a mile.
No matter what these back seat drivers say, I’m on my way.
I look at the stars pushing through the clouds.
That’s the North Star I say sailing my little SUV forward.
This is how Columbus would do it, I think to myself.
And that is crazy™