GPS Chick

I missed a week or two but I was crazy the week prior to vacation. Crazy work schedule, on call for the hospital and my daughter's high school graduation. Anyway, I am on vacation blogging from a Holiday Inn in Williamsburg, Virginia. We, or rather I decided that we should do a family vacation since my daughter will be traveling abroad for the next year and didn't want to do the usual vacation of leaving the kids at home while my wife and I travelled with friends. So here I am in Virginia going to amusement parks and checking out colleges for my son. In typical Griswald style we headed out on a drive to Wally world.

This is my first experience with a GPS. I had bought one for my daughter when she became a driver but I had never used it. Clearly, why would I, a man, need a machine to tell me directions when I could just as easily use my brain and consult with a map. But she convinced me to take the GPS along with us and I learned to use it. At first I thought wow, this is a terrific device. I could just plug in my destination and just listen to the GPS chick tell me where to go. But slowly my reaction became mixed.

I am not sure when, but at some point during the drive I realized that something was missing. The challenge of the open road, figuring out how to get to the next destination was lost. Using the GPS eliminated that sense of fulfillment and satisfaction I would gain upon reaching the next destination using my own navigation skills. I am convinced that our children who will always use a GPS will never attain those navigation skills. A loss? who knows.

Truthfully though, I just couldn't put down the map. Somehow I lacked complete trust in the GPS chick. A couple of times my calculated route conflicted with the GPS chick's and I didn't know whether to trust her or use my own judgement. Of course my wife would always side with the GPS chick and they would gang up on me. Now I had to contend with two women nagging me about directions, GPS chick and my wife, instead of just my spouse. If you include my daughter that's three females against me. How is a man supposed to endure an expedition with three women giving me orders to turn right or left? Very demasculinizing.

I wonder if there is a way to program the GPS to get a man's voice. Then I will call him the GPS guy. I would have a much easier time accepting directional orders from a masculine voice. Maybe they can get General Mcchrystal to do the voice now that he is out of a job. I would feel extremely comfortable taking his orders even if my wife and daughter would always side with him against me.