The Atlas
As most of you know, I am hopelessly directionally dyslexic and Randy is the opposite—he carries a map in his brain. I tell him I think he has iron in the tip of his nose. It seems like he can sniff out directions, like a compass. He just knows which way is North, South, East, or West, wherever he is. I have no idea and, in fact, have remonstrated with him in the past, saying, “You just said ‘North’ to me” in a disapproving voice when he gives me directions that contain those meaningless-to-me directional terms.
You can imagine, then, what a useless navigator I am in my role as co-pilot on our trips. But, just as GPS changed my life in my own travels, it has changed things in that role, too. I can now put our destination into Google Maps (In reality I use the Apple map app native to my iPhone; I think of it as Google, though, in my mind.) on my phone and have Google give Randy directions. That’s usually very helpful, but often—often—Randy is frustrated by Google Maps. Whereas I am thankful for the repeated reassurances when Google tells me “In a half mile, turn left,” then, “After this stop light, turn left,” and then again, “Turn left” when I am at the turn, that repetition just annoys Randy. And when Google gives me one set of instructions to get somewhere and then a quite different set to get home, I do not care. I am just glad to get somewhere and back without getting lost and crying. Randy detests that inconsistency and sees it as a great fault in the system.
One of his biggest frustrations is trying to follow Google directions when he is somewhere he’s never been. After going through several tense times, I figured out that the reason he’s so frustrated is he wants a complete picture/map of the route in his head rather than the bite-sized directions you get from Google. Now when we are going somewhere new, I ask Randy to look at the Google map before we start and hand him my phone. He takes the phone, zooms out to see the whole route, then he follows the entire route with his finger to get the map in his mind of the whole trip. Listening to the directions, then, is a good way to get detailed turn-by-turn instructions as we go.
When we first got our trailer, Randy’s brother Dale who is a truck driver for Walmart gave us his Rand-McNally atlas and we enjoyed looking at it the night before we drove again. This year I bought the 2023, large format edition. I enjoy looking at it but Randy really likes it. He looks at different alternatives and thinks about which one to use, he looks at the magnified depictions of some of our destinations, and checks out the cities, towns, and sights we’ll pass. For this trip, Ran is thinking we’ll take Interstate 40 across the country. Sounds/looks good to me.