I sit here asking myself, “What was the point?”
Today I am driving to the monastery which I have done many times. On the 1 1/2 to 2 hour drive I spend much of the time on autopilot and sometimes miss the turn I need to take. When that means missing an exit on the highway or the only turn for a couple of miles on a narrow-twisting-turning (don’t even think of pulling onto the shoulder because it is a 30 foot drop) road in the middle of nowhere it can be irritating.
My bright idea this morning was to use the maps app on my Android phone to plan a route to remind me when to turn along the way. Sounds like a great idea don’t you think? Think again. I have spent more than 25 years living and driving around the area that I live in. If I need a phone to tell me how to get there I probably don’t need to go. This means I have never used this function on my phone. Once I got it started and figured out how to set my home as the starting point of the trip I then spent forever trying to find a way to set the destination of the monastery (it is WAY WAY WAY out in the middle of NOWHERE!). I finally had to get on the computer and go to Google Maps. Google didn’t want to find the address either. Next line of attack, I found Ava on the map and followed the roads I wanted to take until I got out to where the monastery should be and switched to satellite mode. Then when I found the grounds of the monastery I finally got it to give me coordinates of the site and put them in for the destination. When I did this it popped up the ‘Trappist Monastery’ and the address…I was a little angry about this. If it knew what was at the coordinates when I put them in, why didn’t know the coordinates when I put in the address at the start of this? Anyway, at this point the app tried to route me off through the scenic countryside. I couldn’t get it to understand that I would have enough scenic on the 2nd half of the trip. I just wanted to stick to the highway as much as possible. At this point I should have given up…but I couldn’t…it was a matter of honor at this point. So back to the computer to get Google Maps, which was much more flexible about my routing, to set up the route and save it. Then the problem was getting my phone to find the route. “But, JD, it is all on the same Google account so it should just be right there.” Well, that is what I thought…but it took about 20 minuets of sending, emailing, saving, linking, and whatever else I could think of before I could get it to show up in the app on my phone. I still don’t know if it is going to work right. I guess I will find out on the way…but now I am wondering if my GPS running will drain my phone before I get there. Guess I should find my car charger.
“What was the point?” Do you see why I was asking that? I know I didn’t give much in the way of times…in the end it took me longer to do all that than it would have to drive to the monastery.
TL;DR
If you have a GPS device run over it with your car. Technology will be the death of us.
Eccentric Behavior 