This is a column about getting lost and, as such, will be characterized by digressions, strange turns and unexpected discoveries.
Wall Street Journal columnist Rich Cohen recently argued that GPS has ruined travel because we can no longer get lost. In ‘What I Learned Getting Lost on America’s Backroads’ he noted “We are the sheep that built their own shepherds.”
Bullseye. Thanks to GPS, we no longer worry about going off track.
I was particularly struck by the article because I read it while preparing for a two-day road trip from Toronto to the Outer Banks, a 321-kilometre stretch of North Carolina beach that offers the best body surfing on the East Coast. When I drive from Toronto to the Outer Banks – a trip I’ve been making since 1997 – I always get lost in Philipsburg, Penn. So will you, if you ever make that drive. GPS or no GPS. That is not the question. You will get lost in Philipsburg.
The error begins a little after we pass through Ellicottville, N.Y., and I ask my wife, “What’s the name of that place I always get lost in?” We can’t recall, even though we vowed the last time we drove to the Outer Banks to remember because I had gotten lost. When I use GPS, it tells me to turn left on “Beaver Street” once I’ve passed Philipsburg Memorial Park and then make a right. It’s technically accurate, but you are only on “Beaver Street” for about four metres. So, I keep going left and get lost. I curse for a while, yelling, “Philipsburg, that’s it!” After five minutes of Philipsburg back streets, I figure it out.
Prior to GPS, I would get lost because when my wife, reading the TripTik we ordered from CAA, would tell me to “turn left on Beaver Street and then keep right on South Center Street” I would not believe her and just keep going. I would curse for a while, yelling, “Philipsburg, that’s it!” After five minutes of Philipsburg back streets, I’d figure it out.
I’m haunted by Philipsburg. If you made a movie inspired by my life and called it Citizen Clark it would start with me dropping my iPhone and muttering “Philipsburg” as I expired. The rest of the movie would be a journalist trying to find out what I meant by “Philipsburg” and end with my iPhone roasting on an incinerator fire with the word “Philipsburg” typed into my GPS.
Last week, I made the same wrong turn in Philipsburg.
GPS is wonderful. You never get lost and you save precious seconds because it takes you on pointless complicated routes. Think of GPS as an annoying acquaintance who is always technically right. GPS is also a blabbermouth. Thanks to GPS, there are no more shortcuts. As we drove Highway 12 approaching Duck, N.C., Google Maps directed us off the highway and onto some residential side streets. It was supposed to be faster. Guess what, Google Maps has a big mouth. It told everyone else. Instead of a faster route, it was bumper-to-bumper on residential side streets. Boring and pointless. That’s the GPS difference.
So, we still get delayed and misdirected, just in far less interesting ways. Human mistakes could have very pleasant consequences. Cohen recalled a wrong turn in 1994 that “ended up in the beach town where we met those girls and spent that lost, nearly perfect week.”
I have not been so lucky but have been lost on roads so weird, I thought a serial killer lives here. I did once go into the wrong bar in Bethesda, Md. and met two women from Baltimore who took me and my brother to an Orioles game the following day, but that’s about it.
A 10/10 getting lost would be the night my friends and I tried to find a cottage party on Big Rideau Lake outside Ottawa. We were teenagers and we drove endlessly down dirt roads, oil-slicked lanes and two-lane rural routes as the moon glared down. Certain we’d find the cottage on the next turn, we fantasied about what we’d discover when we finally got there. Unlimited kegs of beer, naked volleyball, illicit substances, tables “garnished with glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.” We never did it. As dawn approached, we drove back to the city. We weren’t even close.
“Searching-for-the-elusive-cottage lost” is a distinctly Canadian kind of lost. It’s the peameal bacon of getting lost. I could write an entire column about Canadian drivers searching in vain for the elusive cottages. How a single Canadian has ever found a cottage (or “cabin” if you’re from out west) is beyond me. I have driven to cottages and found them many times and I still don’t know how I did it. It’s like I blackout the entire experience and must start from scratch. Before GPS, we’d use distinguishing terrain, for instance, “Turn when you see the shack with a tree growing out of it.” Signs with family names worked, or balloons tied to trees.
We made it to the Outer Banks using GPS, a CAA TripTik and memory. Unfortunately, so did Hurricane Debby. Strange, she wasn’t on the GPS.