Posted by karakoram 7 hours ago
Tell people they have to turn right 6 times and drive 4 kilometers and they won't believe you.
But, based on the landmarks I can see and my vague memory that the Randall is "up above us" I turn left on Masonic away from Corona Heights Park, misidentifying the neighboring Buena Vista Park as Corona Heights and orbiting it looking for the museum until we see a prominent staircase with a sign saying "Buena Vista Park" and I realize the extent of my eff-up. I turn away and switch my car's screen from Media to Map -- it doesn't have Corona Heights marked in green as a park but it's reasonably clear where it has to be -- and then unexpectedly I realize I'm in the Castro, randomly?
Punching the thing into GPS takes a second and then the Randall is in fact, in a cul-de-sac which is not what I was expecting -- actually I miss the turn down States Street where the playground was -- and so even though I'm "right next" to the Randall, GPS is like "okay, let's go up the big hill all the way back to where you started turning onto Roosevelt, and we'll try ALL OF THIS over again."
My wife and daughter, needless to say, did not view this as a successful exploration even though I was quite happy with the fact that I'd indeed recognized the neighborhood (and the playground and the museum without seeing either of them).
My wife and I went on a backpacking trip in the wilderness some years ago. We decided to take a shortcut, bushwacking down a river drainage (1.5 miles) rather than taking the trail all the way around (7 miles) hoping to extend a later part of our trip.
We got downhill through the bushwhack to the bottom of the river valley just fine, but discovered at the bottom that a fire had come through the area a year or two prior. It had completely obliterated the trail, any markers, etc, and trees were fallen everywhere making moving in a straight line very difficult.
Despite having a phone with GPS and offline maps showing exactly where the trail "should" be, the lack of the trail actually existing combined with the challenging terrain made navigating out of the area a huge challenge. It was very easy to start wandering off in the wrong direction away from where the trail used to run without realizing and having to course correct back. I think we were moving at maybe 1/3 mile per hour, for 5-6 hours, until we finally made it out of the burn to where the trail existed again.
One thing I notice is that I pay more attention to the road names whenever going somewhere without a map or GPS. I try to memorize road names instead of "turn left" or "turn right" notifications in digital maps these days.
Articles like this one annoy me so much, where is clear the author started with a premise and backfilled the "evidence". The New Yorker would never publish this kind of speculative innuendo if the article was for example about vaccine hesitancy, so it's frustrating to see that stanard relaxed for other topics.
Only much later did various games start to abandon that marker (possibly even a map in general), because it made navigation too easy: it disincentivized exploration, orientation, things like figuring out vague verbal directions, and path finding in general.
Maybe I need an app that just yells at you when you take a super-wrong turn, or if you're about to be in a massive amount traffic?