GPS: This girl’s positioning system

We weren’t even clear of Washington when the bickering began.

She: “Take the exit right, then keep right.”

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The Road to Bemis

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The Washington Post sent two reporters to Bemis, West Virginia. One used a GPS, the other a printed map. Which would you choose? And where would you stop along the way?

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• Can this GPS aficionado do a low-tech road trip?
• GPS: This girl’s positioning system
• Road to Bemis
• Map: The Road to Bemis

Me: That’s not correct. We need to get onto Route 66, up ahead.

She: “Keep right, then keep left.”

Me: What the . . . ? You’re putting us on Route 50? To go to West Virginia? Where did you learn to navigate, lady, inside a cardboard box?

Scarcely into the 219-mile drive to Bemis, W.Va., relations between the driver (moi) and the co-pilot (a TomTom GPS unit) had started to deteriorate. I didn’t trust her judgment, and she didn’t care for my ineptitude at following her directions. At this rate — after nearly an hour, we were still rambling around the outskirts of Washington — we’d never make it to the teeny mountain town, much less dominate the Travel section drive-off between the modern-day GPS and the old-fashioned road map. If we couldn’t find our way out of Washington, how would we ever survive the winding lanes and potentially spotty satellite service of West Virginia?

“At the end of the road, turn right,” Little Miss GPS said somewhat cryptically, after she had led us into the parking lot of the Fairfax County Public Library. I defied her, opting to pull a U-turn rather than drive onto the grass, as she recommended.

This GPS-controlled foray was my first. Typically, my method of navigation is a combination of Google Maps printouts and shouting at strangers. When the paper trail fails me, which it often does, I yell for help at people walking by, idling at red lights, unloading cases of beer — really anyone who looks like they know their right from their left.

Of course, this arbitrary technique is not the most efficient or scientific. Common citizens, for the most part, are good at pointing and drawing chicken-scratch maps, but fall below average when pressed to recall exact street names and distances. Once, in Alexandria, I was so frustrated by the townsfolk, who had repeatedly sent me to the wrong end of a barricaded street, that I asked a mailman if I could please follow him to the location. Thankfully, it was on his route.

In theory, I’m not against GPS, though I do have my concerns. Such as that I might stare at the screen a second too long and ram into a tree. Or that the gadget hasn’t been loaded with the most current data and will dump me onto a circuitous, outdated route. Or, scariest of all, that the battery will run out, and I’ll be stranded alone with a useless piece of technology incapable of administering comfort.

“Keep left and take the highway,” said my dashboard friend as I triumphantly cruised onto Interstate 66.

(A suggestion to GPS engineers: Maybe you should program the machine to say, “Hooray, you did it!” after a successful turn. The boost would do wonders for the driver’s self-confidence.)

The GPS and I got along famously when we had nowhere to go but straight ahead. For 64 miles, we flew along I-66 with the car windows rolled down and the tunes cranked up. (Even at 100 percent volume, though, she still spoke as if she were in church. To clearly hear her, I’d have to close the windows and mute the tunes.) On a long stretch of Virginia highway, she opened her virtual mouth only once, when I tried to sneak in a rest stop.