Driving Blind

How quickly we become dependent! Because of construction, I've learned to depend on my GPS with realtime traffic. I've told you in the past how it has saved me time, and when used without good judgment, cost me time, but for the most part it has been a great tool to have.

My son and his wife flew in from Germany last night and planed to head out of town to visit some friends for a couple of days, so he asked if he could borrow the GPS, unless I felt like I needed it for traffic. Being no wimp, I handed it to him. I can do the commute on my own!

Actually, I haven't been using it on the way home from work lately because the eastbound construction has been completed and I don't ever have a problem in the afternoon. On the way in, it's often still useful, but I headed out blind this morning. There's less traffic now because of people being off of work during the holiday season, I reasoned, and I shouldn't have any need for traffic alerts.

I did get past downtown without a problem, just a short backup that I expected, but suddenly things came to a halt in an unusual spot. I had no GPS to warn me ahead of time, but I have that old standby, a pair of eyes! On the top of the overpass I could see that the backup stretched for miles ahead, so I made my way to the right across 5 lanes and exited at Heights Blvd. I did find surprise construction that prevented me from turning left on 11th Street, but it was easy to make a block, and the GPS wouldn't have known about that anyway.

This post may seem silly, and I felt a little silly when I mentally hesitated before giving him the unit this morning. The technological tools are nice, but the truth is that most of the time we don't need them. Still, if it were stolen, I'd buy another one.