Nav Love

Given my need to retreat from technology more often lately, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I have........fallen in love with a machine. And it's true love. Yup, I now own "it - the Garmin 2720."

She says, "take a right on Delores." Up ahead, "take a right and then a left," and as I approach the left, she tells me the street name again while simultaneously flashing the name on my screen.

I try to screw with her by backing up and turning around. The screen looks like its trying to reboot, but only for a second before her voice says, "renavigating," and I get a new set of directions from the new location. She desperately tries to keep me on course and every street or two, or whenever I happen to stray, she tells me that she's renavigating again.....She must have been ready to divorce me tonight - annoyed and frustrated with my circling and back routes.

Later, I've had too much rich food once again (ah, t'is the season) and my mind is fried. I tell her to go home and she takes me there without a glitch. The best part of my experience with her was at the very end, when I was done driving around the city and wanting head to meet pillow, her final words say "Arriving at home on left." She even gets friend's names right if I program her correctly.

Like calculators, VCRs, cell phones, TiVos, and ipods, will we all be saying "how did we live without our Nav system" two years from now? At that time, it will likely move beyond street names (my model was the only one I found that included that feature btw), and tell me that I'm passing x theatre or y restaurant. How spooky would it be, if she started saying things like "passing your friend David's house on the right and Jamba Juice on the left."

What a connection I had with her tonight!!! She's been in my life for all of 48 hours and I'm already thinking - "I can't imagine life without you."