what is a gps
For those who don’t know what GPS really is… in a nutshell… a tracking system created by the US government for spying that was finally opened up to the public for use in the 1980’s. It consists of three parts, satellites orbiting the Earth, monitoring stations, and the actual GPS unit.
There are many providers of GPS units and two of the most recognizable would be
Garmin and Magellan
OK, now this is what I really think about them.
Every time I pull out of my driveway with my GPS, I know it’s ready and willing to get me to my final destination, eventually. But also at this moment I begin to feel the added anxiety that GPS has created in my life. Not only do I have the daily stress of life, now I have GPS to add even more. I realize how smart these GPS really are and how much they are starting to take over many people’s lives.
Getting the chance to almost feel like you’ve been given your own crystal ball and can see far into the distance. Knowing which streets are coming up gives you a kind of superpower. It makes me wonder what our forever lost parents were really missing. Although some seniors have GPS (most provided by technology-driven kids), most seniors still believe that “they got by before and they sure don’t need any steering gadgets now” or ” I’m getting too old to have to learn something new’ either way, both can be correct.
Can you imagine if our parents had GPS when we were kids? “Stop and ask someone” my mom would say or “look, there’s a gas station! Stop!” or even better “we could have been there if only you had stopped half an hour ago to ask someone”, all of us kids always totally agreed with mom. It could be the real reason we would start at the house and ask “are we there yet?” If we had GPS, we could tell that Dad wasn’t just losing us… again.
I remember a time when my parents bought a new cabin an hour and a half from our house and they invited all of us to come see their new place and have Thanksgiving dinner. We left with the instructions given by my parents. Somehow we got lost and my now ex-husband insisted that he would find the way, even though he had never been in that area, but his psychic ability would guide him.
Unfortunately, it was long before GPS and cell phones existed. It took almost 8 hours and after dinner time before she finally gave up and got proper instructions, okay yeah I’m still a little bitter about it. More for the fact that the kids in the back kept saying “are we almost there?”, and he would reply… Soon!
The best part of having a GPS is that you don’t feel like you’re driving alone. You actually receive verbal instructions on how to get to your destination, either ‘in the shortest time, shortest distance’ or probably the best most used route on the highways, which should not necessarily be considered the fastest route. If you go online, you now also have a new saying that can now be downloaded to your system. This could offer a lot of interesting instructions to further improve your driving, at least to indulge yourself.
Putting a GPS in your car is also like having a driver in the back seat without the hassle of you yelling ‘where are you going’, ‘stop and ask how to get there’, or ‘watch out for that car’… yadda, yadda . Many times I find myself yelling at the GPS, but I can actually do it knowing that I don’t have to worry about hurting his feelings.
GPS has changed my life, and not necessarily for the better. The anxiety that comes from knowing that at some point in my day I’m going to be faced with the flawless, “Recalculating route! Or, “When possible, make a legal U-turn.” All I can say is, “Again.” No! I was sure that I had taken the right path” …but yes, every time I venture out I know that I am going to discover that I am semi-lost again.
Sometimes it’s not always my fault. How many times have I turned into a street before or even worse right after. The ding, ding, ding of the GPS means here is your street NOW, NOW turn fast, sometimes it doesn’t happen until you get right in the middle of that intersection. I’ve also heard it tell me to also turn earlier than I should. There are also many times when I am smarter than my GPS and know a route that it just doesn’t want to recognise.
It’s always nice to know that your system will start communicating with you when you have three miles to your turn, but that just means that for the next three miles I’ll be stressed knowing that I’ll have to turn and possibly get lost again.
We recently traveled to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, not sure how we made it, but it was almost like our GPS was on vacation. Over and over again we missed fairways, went the wrong way, and wanted to dump the unit in the bay. I’ve never heard so many swear words on a piece of technology that we all still think we need. Somehow we even made it to Baltimore like I said I think the GPS was sightseeing.
Remembering the rule of fastest time, most highway use, shortest distance according to the way birds fly, it’s not always easy to decide which one to take. What I really wish my GPS could do is read my mind, somehow know and warn me that the directions I put into my system were actually wrong before I left late the next morning.
I also want him to pretend I made the right travel decision for a change when the family is in the car and not let them know I’m a GPS idiot and got lost again, or if I’m going to get lost, I hope he’d take me to a interesting place… wait, that happened, we got to visit Baltimore.
I love it when you finally arrive at your destination and it says “You’ve arrived!” It’s like a huge weight is finally lifted from my head, but then I realize there’s still the return trip to go and what will be the shortest time now?
Yesterday I was sitting in the living room and programming the GPS trying to figure out which way I was going to go to get to my appointment the next day. Everything was quiet and I wasn’t moving at all when all of a sudden the GPS calls out “Keep left!” I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically with my husband as we both looked at the unit and shook our heads… I said, “Now you see the problem.” It’s really not my fault that the GPS has its own agenda. Then I realized that my GPS meant (Getting people somewhere!)… Now, that’s another story.
