Travelling around the four states in my own vehicle gave me a great sense of mobility; I arranged meetings with architects and designers according to the towns near the metro areas in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas; construction projects were plentiful, and the competitive products reps congregated in the metro areas as opposed to the smaller cities and towns which became my bread and butter.
To alleviate the cumbersome paper maps available at gas stations, I avail myself of the new Global Positioning System, ordinarily called a GPS; mounted where I could glance at it and using the British sounding gentleman as a guide, I was able to locate every one of my appointments without pause.
However, outside of the city limits, the names and addresses of some of my destinations paled in comparison to the better-known metro addresses. How do you ask the GPS to find Lodge Creek Road without a number or a reference point? Not easy.
I ventured out of Little Rock to find a new building under construction where I was to meet the architect to discuss the interior finishes of the new health care center. The street was not registered yet wherever the GPS gets the new locations, as it was a newly excavated road to reach the new center. New street, no numbering system, new building.
I tried and followed the verbal directions received from the GPS upon making the appointment and ended up at a NO EXIT gravel road with single wide prefab houses on both sides; a sight from Deliverance if I can describe it at all. There was this mean looking man slouching on a door frame without a door, with a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Looking to my right I caught sight of another non-descript person meandering toward my car with a lost look on its face. To my left was a half-burned home being searched by yet another person with a beer and cigarette on its hand and semi-dressed in rumpled clothing.
The GPS lied once again! I made a quick turn-around and left the gravel road without looking back and hoping none of the residents would follow and ask me to stay for dinner as I don’t drink beer or eat with strangers.
Eventually I found the location of the building and was grateful this episode in my travels was not a deterrent to future business.
On the other hand, Grumpy’s new truck has direct connection to his iPhone, GPS available on a small screen on the dashboard, direct voice to his hearing aids and a voice which tells him how far he is from his destination, among other wonderful built-in features. He thinks he’s something special. I, on the other hand, still work with my old car and my old GPS which takes me from point here to point there without the need of any built-in features and it’s OK.
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