Friday, March 29, 2024

Dead Reckoning

Suddenly, a traffic sign blinked its warning: despite the clear road we were enjoying, just a few miles ahead there was major congestion. The angry red line on our map app only confirmed the bad news, and our ETA was rising like a fever. Despite limited knowledge of the area, I made a spontaneous decision to bail out onto a secondary road that seemed to go in the right general direction.

Immediately I felt my blood pressure lower. Ahead was a rolling two-lane road flanked by century-old brick homes and barns, and cutting a clear swath through woods and farmland. The sun was setting behind us as we headed east and south, bathing the entire landscape in golden light. 

Oh, my navigation app was not happy-- it advised us to make a U-turn, then make a left turn, then make a right turn, all suggestions I ignored. And I could almost hear it sigh with annoyance and then, was that surprise? As it re-routed us and took 15 minutes off our arrival time.

2 comments:

  1. And this is why humans are still smarter than AI.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You capture the nagging navigation app so well in this slice. I often disregard mine, which makes me wonder why I even use it.

      Delete