Do you need a sense of direction? Maybe all you need is an urban compass.
Got high tech?
Staying above the water line!
Riverwalker
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Merry Christmas to Everyone
10 years ago
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
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5 comments:
I HATE those things talking to me.
And NO, I do not have one, or two, or three.
Bob
III
I'm not a fan either, I'll take my Texas Road Atlas and horse sense any day over those. I'm pretty set in my ways I guess.
Paranoid too, I wonder if those things can be used to trace your location.
I have several of those, or have had several. For the car ones: one in my truck now; one in my little sister’s car; and two that are just backups I guess. The outdoors ones though – I think they’re great. I have one I keep clipped on my backpack, and a couple of older ones that I used to use that I keep around as backup. A lot of people going outdoors don’t know how to navigate and could potentially get lost without one. A guy I used to work with went elk hunting and he and his buddy got disoriented and lost and he said if not for the GPS they had that had a waypoint of their camp saved in it, they’d have been screwed.
I love the one I have in my truck. I don’t always trust the directions it gives to be the best route, but I like that it can show you on the map where your destination is. And it’s pretty handy when you’re in an unfamiliar place and you want to know where the closest restaurant or gas station or library is. I also use it as both a speedometer and trip odometer. The position of my steering wheel makes it hard for me to see the speedometer, so I can just glance to the middle of the windshield and see what the GPS says. And I always reset the trip odometer in the truck when I fill up with gas, so if I want to see how far I’ve gone on a particular trip, I can reset the GPS and it’ll track speed, time, average speed, and all that stuff.
I think they’re a great tool. They’re not perfect and you should know how to read a map, but I can remember before these things when I would be in an unfamiliar place looking for a store or a particular address I’d have to pull in at a gas station and ask for a phone book so I could look at the map. They’re really convenient if you’re travelling.
I use those as a 'suggested' driving directions - aka a backseat driver. I tend to ignore them and go my own way, but it's often on.
My wife will follow it's directions to the letter, around and around and around in circles. **recalculating**
A urban compass suggestion. The partial moon phases point southerly if you line up a line from tip to tip of the crescent and follow that line to the horizon. There is about a 90 degree spread, so it's not true south, but combined with the fact that most gridded road systems run in cardinal directions you can very quickly find south.
Try it out!
I think they have their good points and bad points.
Mrs. RW likes it for the fact that if she has to detour from her established route. She's able to get back on track to her destination without driving extra and unnecessary miles that will eat up fuel.
While they shouldn't be considered a replacement for a good map (my choice), as Josh mentioned they can provide you with additional useful information.
Not sure if you can be tracked down by the use of a GPS unit but probably not more risk than carrying a cell phone ...and it is probably less risk than using a cell phone.
Like most technology, it can have it's positive side but you should probably learn to do things the old-fashioned way as well. Less chance of becoming a problem...especially if your batteries go dead.
Thanks.
RW
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