Of my flaws one of the most glaring is my pathetic and utterly non-existent sense of direction.  Couple that with the fact that I really don’t pay attention to the successful path to any destination, and I rarely can find the way back to my origin point.  It is really odd because my father has this innate ability, the precision of which makes me think it a Talent from the Age of Legends (a late Robert Jordan reference).  For all his efforts and advice my life in a vehicle is basically a constant barrage of squinting at street signs, quick lane changes, and U-turns.

The development of MapQuest and GoogleMaps has certainly helped me on many journeys, but only as long as I make no deviation from the printed directions.  The miles I have driven just to back-track to my designated route are ridiculous.  I don’t even want to recall the time that my exit ramp off the Interstate was closed for repairs. 

Enter the invention of the Global Positioning System or GPS for short.  I first tried out a Magellan unit on a holiday trip about four years ago, and although it helped, my experience was less than ideal for three major reasons:

·         I had to manually load in all the states I might travel to into the unit. 

·         I found that there were several streets that weren’t accurate or weren’t in the device. 

·         I wanted to eat at Chick-fil-a and the closest one in the device…seven hundred miles away. 

Even with the short comings, I got to grandmother’s house and back without getting lost over the river or through the woods.  And with much less anxiety.

Flash forward to present day and the GPS industry has changed quite a bit.  In fact it is one of the fastest growing areas in consumer electronics.  Prices have fallen dramatically, the size of the devices have shrunk considerably, and the precision of the directions are almost as accurate as if my dad was riding co-pilot.

All three of my reasons for not wanting a GPS four years ago have been addressed with preloaded maps of all 50 states, up-to-date mapping software, and millions of points of interest.  On top of that your unit can tell you exactly which street (by name) you should turn onto, you may connect it to your Bluetooth phone to take calls, listen to MP3’s, and much more. 

Best of all every GPS unit includes my favorite feature…Recalculating Route.