Which way is it?

I am not going to toot my horn and say like a few men out there, that given a few hours, I will figure out any piece of mechanism or get myself out of any place without asking direction even though I am lost. I would call them folks, knuckleheads. If you are lost anywhere, you stop and ask for directions. I for one, have a bad sense of direction and keep asking for directions even to a place that I have been a zillion times. So I got myself a GPS unit which I use now to get myself ported anywhere I want to go.


GPS unit is easy to figure out even for a kid. If my 10-year old can figure out, anyone who is driving a vehicle can figure out how to use it. You can get the GPS for about $150 (Megallan is good, if you are looking for one to buy this year) and use it externally or have it installed in the vehicle or get a vehicle with one installed already. The navigation system basically has the option of entering an address that you want to get to and different choices of getting directions and some being ‘Fastest time’, ‘Shortest distance’, ‘avoid highways’. But what you get in terms of directions is not entirely reliable or safe as witnessed by a couple during the weekend of this past Christmas. The couples were using their SUV’s navigation system through the desert of Eastern Oregon but were misled into a remote forest road. With the snow storm occurring during that time, they were stranded for two and a half days before they could get a faint signal in their cell phone to make the emergency call for help.


It has been my experience as well that when I use the GPS directions while I am in DC (obviously I was taking my guests to DC for site-seeing and posing for pictures), it would give me a round-about way to get to my home. The easier route might have been to get on I-66 from Constitution Avenue but instead it would direct me to get on I-395 and go around Virginia before I can get home. The reason might be that it was avoiding I-66 for HOV restrictions. But similar episodes when driving out of state has occurred and me being disoriented generally, make it a point to ask for directions in the gas stations (while getting ‘fuel’) to make sure that I am heading the right way. It is very important to have a general feel for directions and instead of blindly following the directions by GPS, use local maps and stop to ask for directions. But men being what they are don’t ask for directions even after they are lost for a good amount of time. Maybe it is about time for us (females) to figure out the mechanics of thinking on those dogged out men.