Don't use GPS

I don't want to use the GPS if at all possible, I said to my friend who insisted I use it to navigate. "I know where I'm going."¹

He wasn't convinced, but in his slightly drunken state, he let it go. I may not have exactly known where I was going, but that's the joy of driving without GPS. You have to rely on the road signs and your general sense of how things are laid out in a city if you've been there a few times before.²

I had been to Vacaville many times. There are outlets and a convention center of some sort, and these were the only things to see there.³ And I learned that as I was driving through, not by relying on GPS.

For some reason, we always end up at Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant on Tuesdays and Thursdays when they have half-off deals. It's on the other side of the freeway, and I know because I've been there probably half a dozen times.

"I'm using the GPS in here," pointing to my heart, trying to channel Stephen Colbert's hilarious Emmy Awards banter. But my friend still wasn't convinced⁴, so I pulled out Google Maps and looked at it for 30 seconds, just long enough to orient myself. I was not going to let some voice tell me where to go.

Then I saw a familiar road name, Nut Tree Road. "Yes, that's the one with all the outlets on it."^nuts

The nice thing about not relying on GPS is that you get a better mental picture of the city. And that knowledge outlasts the temporary suffering and irritation of your traveling companions.