I wouldn't call us Luddites, but my wife and I are wary of gadgets; fascinated by them, but preferring not to actually possess and be possessed.
So it was with great reluctance that we bought Gertrude, and even as we drove home with her, we weren't sure we really needed a global positioning system receiver. But we had been stuck in a funny in-between place when it came to plotting routes.
We depended on our home-only access to websites such as Mapquest, carrying sheaves of printouts with us in the car. If we were going to more than one place, there was a whole itinerary pre-plotted.
Sometimes we'd find out halfway we didn't need to go somewhere, but we'd still drive there to pick up the route from that point.
Then, as we got to know the area around us a better, we bought the Original Flavour global positioning system: a small car compass with a suction-cup mount.
It served us well in this land where the streets are either north-south or east-west. The catch was, of course, you had to remember the orientation of the street you wanted - remember what they told you in school about the point where parallel lines meet?
Got lost
This would probably have continued, but we recently got lost at night... again. Los Angeles isn't nearly as bad as it's made out to be, but even so, it's not the sort of city where you wind down a window and ask for directions after the sun sets.
So with safety being the clincher, we went out and got Gertrude. (I know we're not alone in naming our GPS receiver.)
We haven't had her long, but she's already shown us her bad side. She's voluble from the word go when we leave home, constantly telling us how best to exit our apartment complex, and getting it all wrong.
But when we start her up in a strange place, she stays infuriatingly silent, making us drive around in circles for a while before she deigns to tell us what to do.
Also, if you're looking for a shop, and don't know what town it's in, you can forget about asking Gertrude. She just sits, turning that hourglass over and over until you give up with a scream.
In most cities, this wouldn't be a problem, but not in LA. The actual city of Los Angeles is just a tiny part of Los Angeles. For example, we live in the city of Arcadia, but the supermarket a short walk west is in Pasadena.
A little further, and it's San Marino. Walk south and you're in Temple City. And South Pasadena, nearby, isn't the southern part of Pasadena, oh no, it's a whole city on its own. So how am I supposed to know which town Tommy's Burgers is in?
Problem
This is the problem with gadgets that are supposed to simplify your life. They make the smaller picture easier and complicate the larger one.
Gertrude is just one more thing to remember when leaving the house, in addition to shopping bag, house keys, telephone, wallet and oven (making sure it's off).
And one more thing to worry about getting stolen, broken or short-circuited. Gertrude is just excess mental baggage.
Or so I thought until my wife and I navigated several times to strange places and didn't have an argument even once. Y
ou know the one, the 'married couple in car' argument that repeatedly features the sentence, "You aren't reading the directions out properly".
Instead, Gertrude's severe monotone cuts through everything, keeping the peace, and keeping us, more or less, on the right track.
Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.
