MountainMornings

A rainy, foggy good morning to you! Do you know that there’s been a feud going on for a long time between two rivals? No, not the Hatfield and McCoy one, although that took place in my neighboring state of West Virginia. I’m talking about a world domination battle, over directions. Apple and Google have been dueling it out over “Maps” from the Apps inception, and finally Apple has said, enough! http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3363364&pagtype=allchandate

Remember the good old days when you’d be driving along in a car with the hubby and you’d get lost? Inexplicably, unbearably lost. You’d be squinting down at a gas station paper map that made absolutely no sense. And you’d want to stop the nearest stranger and ask for directions. But no, that would never do. The male of our species can never show his belly, he must always look large and in charge especially while driving. Some of the best (and by that I mean worst) fights of my married life have occurred inside the confines of a 4 door sedan.

But then we saw the light. There, on a suction cup on our windshield, we feeble travelers could attach a GPS, and the world became our oyster, No more fights, no more he said/she said, even though we would print out a Google map just in case. ER docs, who happen to be pilots, are all about the emergency back-up plan. Now I have this lovely female voice (mine has an Australian accent thanks to the Rocker) guiding me on my travels to Nashville and beyond. And it was in Nashville, while trying to find the Full Moon Pickin Party with the Bride driving, that I first saw her pull out her phone; she handed it to me with instructions to follow the bouncing red ball!

Now my brilliant daughter, the one who has just finished her Chief year in Emergency Medicine, the one with the bouncing blue dot on her phone, has married her North Star. But I can tell you that she could not find her way to the mall as a teenager. The road to the beach was a straight shot, so that was fine, but get her off the peninsula and all was lost. What is it about a sense of direction? Why do some of us have it, while some of us are forever back tracking. Her MOH made that the theme of her toast at the wedding, since she was the navigator on most of their exploits. They managed to travel all around France twice as teenagers, before GPS was invented. I know, hard to imagine.

Still, I think I will miss getting lost in the future. Not the fights, or the feeling of helplessness. But the amazing back roads, the new people, finding an old country store with handmade quilts, the adventure. All those bumps in the road help you slow down and appreciate your surroundings. And since I’m an Apple person now, I’ll just have to say so long to Google on my iPhone. It’s been fun even though I rarely use your bouncing red ball, there’s only so much technology I can swallow. Apple’s new App will have “…real-time traffic conditions, turn-by-turn navigation, Yelp integration, vector graphics, and 3D flyovers. The new Maps app, due out this fall with iOS 6, means the end of the Google Maps-powered app that iOS devices have used since 2007.”