Never Argue with Sophia!

 

She’s stubborn as all get out. When she makes a plan, she sticks with it and won’t let anyone interfere. She argues with us incessantly, and when we go against her wishes, she reluctantly goes along, but only after several protests. She always wants to go back to her original plan. And she is so polite, too; it’s very annoying to see that nothing ruffles her. But most of the time we defer to her: after all, what do a couple of old geezers know about these things?!

So who is Sophia? She is our GPS system. Not the name we gave our GPS system, she is the system. We have Android Auto in our car, and sometimes I’d like to throttle Google.

Sophia seems to have taken on a life of her own. And she knows how to take her revenge. One time she suggested we avoid a major traffic jam by taking a less trafficked route. Less-trafficked is right! We wondered, if the car broke down, would we find our way out of the wheat fields or have to fight off the steers! In fact, I wondered if somehow, we’d gotten off track and ended up in Kansas. And course there were no cell towers, so we couldn’t re-route or call anyone. Eventually we wandered into civilization and found a gas station. Sophia was probably smirking at us by that time. But we had the upper hand once cell towers showed up.

Then there was the time we wanted to re-route to a destination. After a couple of directions from Sophia, we realized after two U-turns that we were essentially going in a big circle. Not nice, Sophia. We were once again going to show her who was in charge and took a parallel route. We showed her!

But sometimes Sophia is actually right. She wanted us to take one route to a Ricochet meet-up and we defied—yes, defied her! We went on a more familiar route. Of course, it was longer and less convenient (we found out from our friends at the meet-up).

Please don’t tell her what I’ve said.

She might take it personally.

And we’ll end up in China.

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There are 34 comments.

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  1. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):
    Yeah, but @kayofmt, those aren’t always up to date! Road closures, road construction–I refuse to be at the mercy of Thomas Guide Maps! Then again, Sophia does not always come through . . .

    AAA to the rescue, with their TripTik system of linear map segments bound together in sequence for your trip, nicely marked up with the latest road projects in each segment. That system goes back decades and still works today. Indeed, you can now use their system online for free, including generating a multipage print file configured for you to fold the pages into a booklet. Try it out:

    https://triptik.aaa.com/

     

    • #31
  2. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    I always take a good map along, as GPS can go wobbly at the worst moments and places. The various mapping applications, app or browser based, are handy to get a clean road view and then a satellite imagery view. 

    • #32
  3. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):
    Yeah, but @kayofmt, those aren’t always up to date! Road closures, road construction–I refuse to be at the mercy of Thomas Guide Maps! Then again, Sophia does not always come through . . .

    AAA to the rescue, with their TripTik system of linear map segments bound together in sequence for your trip, nicely marked up with the latest road projects in each segment. That system goes back decades and still works today. Indeed, you can now use their system online for free, including generating a multipage print file configured for you to fold the pages into a booklet. Try it out:

    https://triptik.aaa.com/

     

    We used to love using those! I’d nearly forgotten about those. I’ll need to think about the triptik for our next road trip. Thanks, @cliffordbrown!

    • #33
  4. WillowSpring Member
    WillowSpring
    @WillowSpring

    My wife has had two Land Rovers where the GPS has a British accent.  There is a female voice that gives directions and we argue with her all the time.  I am usually interested in the last couple of miles to the destination.  I know how to leave my house.

    I start her up before I leave, but if we go in one direction from home, it wants us to turn left on a gravel road which is about half a mile before the main highway to the same direction.  If I decide to go my own way she keeps trying to get me to go turn back and go her way.

    The male voice is what responds to commands such as “Nearest Gas” and “I’m Hungry”.  When we first got the car, I tried the command “I’m Hungry” and the response was “Go Home”.  That cracked us up and as we were laughing, he kept trying to interpret what we were saying, which only made it worse.  We don’t use him anymore.

    • #34
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