tippy-tapping around during emergencies

[The Big Ben]

I
Since I also have helped design GPS units (military, avionic, and civilian) in my "day job" I know how good they can be, and also know of their limitations. In my personal experience, if updated regularly, 95% of the time they are correct, or correct enough - even the tricky one-way streets of Seattle are usually not a problem.

I will buy you a beverage of your choice if you can show me that an up to date GPS unit could reliably find an address in West Seattle. In high school, I delivered the products a Fuller Brush man sold during the week on Saturday morning. Lucky for me, he was pretty orderly in his route so it was kind of easy to just deliver the first one, then the second one, etc because, otherwise, I'm not sure I could have found it with a map *or* a GPS. I got to know it after a few weeks but it could be a challenge. I imagine parts of SF are the same way. Cities built on hills don't have straight line roads.

[lgb&dtuba]

It's interesting to see how many people seem to think that map that's been balled up in your glove compartment for the past 5 years is up to date and won't get you lost.

[David Richoux]

I will buy you a beverage of your choice if you can show me that an up to date GPS unit could reliably find an address in West Seattle. In high school, I delivered the products a Fuller Brush man sold during the week on Saturday morning. Lucky for me, he was pretty orderly in his route so it was kind of easy to just deliver the first one, then the second one, etc because, otherwise, I'm not sure I could have found it with a map *or* a GPS. I got to know it after a few weeks but it could be a challenge. I imagine parts of SF are the same way. Cities built on hills don't have straight line roads.

Seattle and San Francisco are particularly bad, not just because of the hills. The street grids were "designed" by competing companies and head into each other all along one main street (Market in SF, Denny in Seattle.) The rest of the streets that are not on grid meander around the hills and bays just as crazy as Boston or Baltimore.
I know what you mean about West Seattle - first time I was there (1971) on a motorcycle, got to that first (of several) 6 or 7 way intersections (with just one traffic light in the center!) and got totally lost. My Garmin Nuvi works very well there now.

BTW, C.B. radios are just about useless now - if you have the room to take one it might possibly be a last resort, but I sure would not count on having any sane person listening at the given time of your emergency.

[lgb&dtuba]

It's interesting to see how many people seem to think that map that's been balled up in your glove compartment for the past 5 years is up to date and won't get you lost.

Sure...Calculators are easier to use than slide rules (etc., etc...)...except when there are no batteries and (over the decades) not only do people not understand the workings of a slide rule, but now they don't even know how to phrase the question for which they need an answer.

I know how to use a slide rule and own several. Used to use them "back in the day". I keep them around for nostalgia. (I have one in a picture frame over my computer with a placard saying, "In case of power failure - break glass"). They've been pretty well useless ever since affordable calculators were available.

Why not go a step further? Let's go back to using an abacus. Better yet, Chisanbop.

My GPS plugs into the cigarette lighter receptacle and has an on-board battery. If it's not working then the car isn't either and matters of navigation are moot. But in any case, as I stated in an earlier post, do NOT rely on just one means of navigation. I haven't thrown away my paper maps nor my compass. Nor have I suggested that anyone do so.

I still use topo maps and a compass, too. So what?

[bort]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581 ... latestnews" target="_blank

[MaryAnn]

What is a "GPS?" Of course I don't have a cell phone either.

Once again, I put all this down to lack of proper education. Being able to read a map, just like being able to do arithmetic without a calculator (and do a sanity check in one's head to determine if the answer makes sense) are things someone should be able to do by the end of middle school. But our country is still focused on the memorization of data as opposed to learning to think. It's getting worse, not better, over time.

In my experience, there really are some people who lack the brain connectivity/function/whatever to have a sense of direction. Here in Tucson, we have distinctive mountains on three sides; impossible to "get lost" in the daylight. But I knew a woman who could not navigate....she steadfastly claimed she could not see any difference in any of the mountains and therefore could not use them to know where she was. When I tried to point out differences she literally ducked her head, set her heels, and clammed up. Amazing, but then she was pretty old at the time. And I figure that she had put enough time into it to know what she could not do, and wasn't really interested in more failure at the same old thing.

I think this is more common in women but do not know why, since I'm not one who suffers from it. I have met men who get easily turned around, but it doesn't seem to be as common as it is with women. Viva la difference, huh?

MA

[Donn]

In my experience, there really are some people who lack the brain connectivity/function/whatever to have a sense of direction.
...
I think this is more common in women but do not know why, since I'm not one who suffers from it. I have met men who get easily turned around, but it doesn't seem to be as common as it is with women.

The theory I've heard is that it's adaptive, supposing that our ancestors for eons divided labor between men and women such that men went out hunting large game or stealing stuff from their neighbors or whatever, while women foraged for smaller stuff - berries, grubs, water. You'd look for that stuff where you know you'll find it, in season, so you know your world in terms of routes to places, and people with that kind of sense of direction are the ones who insist on telling you how to get to their place in a turn-by-turn itinerary complete with landmarks. If you're out for antelope, you're going to have to head out cross country and just hope you can figure out how to get back, and you need a `sense of direction.'

Of course everyone has both facilities - it's not like sense of direction is encoded on the Y chromosome and therefore available solely to men - but it's an interesting theory about how differences in geographic reckoning could have been a selective advantage. Our world today might be easier for the `sense of direction' types, but I live in the west. Maps of the eastern US show a large scale road pattern that looks like more of a network to me, than the common spoke/hub pattern in the west, and maybe that uses more of that route memory.

[The Big Ben]

You folks might find this amusing.

It's winter in Oregon. Guy uses GPS to find "shorter route". Gets stuck in snow, cell phone didn't work, spends night in car, uses video camera to make 'farewell video', finally is bailed out by friends who use another GPS to find them.

Here's what the Oregon police say:

"Use an old-fashioned paper map as a backup. Pack a survival kit for the winter. Configure your GPS for "highways only," or a similar setting, so that you don't get directed to byways in the winter. Top off your gasoline tank, and charge your cell phone batteries before going into remote areas. Pay attention to the weather."

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/413768_gps02.html" target="_blank