Commentary: Siri, how do I fold a map?

Technology makes travel more convenient

Frequent readers will know I'm what you'd call a late adopter of technology.

It's not that I have anything against it. It's just that I want it to work. Right now. Without a whole lot of setting up and signing in and "pairing" and "locating" and anything else more involved than hitting the clearly-marked "on" button.

And, no offense, but if I go through all of that, I'd like there to be a little more at the end of the rainbow than the chance to become a Twitter follower of the Kardashians or smash little pieces of imaginary candy.

However, I have found an area when the most stridently techie of the population and I can meet with only a minimum of scorn and derision. When it comes to travel, I love my phone.

So, as is typically the case, a little back story. Once upon a time, only briefly after folks headed west in covered wagons, every one of my family's trips happened the same way.

First, we would pack the car with more stuff than a person would ever need, based on the idea that, if we broke down on the side of the road, we'd need blankets, matches, gallons of water, a compass, sleeping bags, road flares and a shovel. Which would have been really good had we been travelling through the Alaskan outback, but a little bit of overkill on a major U.S Interstate that ran smack dab through the middle of the same time zone. But you never know. I mean, zombies ...

Then, we'd set out with a pocket full of whatever cash we were taking (no credit cards for us, and debit cards were just a twinkle in some banker's eye), no hotel reservations (because if we're making good time, we might drive on until midnight!) and a collection of road maps and a dog-eared atlas to guide us.

The relative value of most of that stuff is pretty evident. But as far as the maps/atlas, well, we might as well have been using a sexton and the stars. Which, if you know how to use them, is a great way to get from Bora Bora to Tahiti (is there a bad way to get from Bora Bora to Tahiti?), but is a terrible way to get from Michigan to Oklahoma.

The biggest challenges with the whole map/atlas deal, besides the fact that it's easier to fold a map into a swan or a unicorn or some other origami shape than back into the neat little packet it came in, is that their use requires a two-person team of driver and navigator. Since my dad was doing the driving, that left the navigating part to the rest of us.

Frankly, it would have been better if we'd asked the dog to handle it. At least he had a use for the map.

Now, this would appear to be recipe for disaster. And it was. Unless you're one of those positive people who can always find the good in everything. Which I'm not. But if you were, you'd be able to say you've seen some of the most "challenged" parts of Detroit, Chicago or Gary, Indiana (OK, that's all of Gary, Indiana), and that if you manage to spend just a few more hours in East St. Louis, you get to register to vote there.

Or you'd manage to arrive at the same parking lot in downtown Tulsa you'd found before, right next to the same payphone, which you could use to call an uncle and ask him to come get you. In fact, you wouldn't even need to tell him where. After the sixth or seventh time, he would know.

Contrast that with the most recent trip the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I took. Thanks to Siri's dulcet tones and unbelievable knowledge of Denver and the Vail Valley, we were able to confirm a rent car and the easiest way to get to the downtown and then our lodgings absent a single side trip into a sketchy neighborhood.

We bought attraction tickets, confirmed weather conditions, found restaurants, made reservations and could have located a reasonably priced psychiatrist to examine our heads after we willingly took a whitewater rafting excursion.

And when we returned to Tulsa, I was even able to map the quickest route to a certain poultry-themed fast-0food restaurant that also features diet lemonade. If I had downloaded the app a little quicker, we could have strolled right by the parking lot-like drive-through and the triple-row of folks at the counter and just skipped on away with our food.

OK, so truth be told, I got lucky with some of the almost idiot-proof features of a device I can barely answer, let alone use in any meaningfully complex way. If what I managed was the best I can do, it was pretty pitiful. But not too bad for me.

It certainly could have been worse. I mean, I could have been folding a map.

Commentary on 07/08/2016

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