Gladys, The GPS Girl

Nobody introduced us, however, when our son gave us a GPS for our birthday, it came with this woman who gave instructions like an aunt we knew and we decided to name her Gladys, the GPS Girl. 

Now owning a GPS is nothing new for us. We sailed several thousand miles using a GPS and realize it is probably the most significant navigational device invented since the compass.

Those were the days when the GPS came without a voice and it was used mostly in the air or out to sea.

When technicians adapted GPS for automobiles and roads it took on a new meaning and a new voice.

Why a woman’s voice?

Maybe Gladys was a home body who had nothing else to do but speak into a microphone and say “Now turn left at 2.8 miles.”

Or is Gladys even real? Her voice sounds real, that nagging tone would be hard to manufacture.

Our son who is an expert on such things told us if we didn’t like Gladys we could switch the voice to that of a first sergeant who orders “You will make a left turn at 2.8 miles” or a sexy blond named Shela with honey dripping from her lips who says, “Now dear, if you would please take a left turn at 2.8 miles.”

We could just envision Shela on the GPS as we were talking to our wife on the cell phone “Who is that in your car dear? I hear a sexy voice in the background?”

No Gladys will have to do, but she really needs to be travel trained.

While driving to the coast, she had us turning right into the sea, and on the way to Mexico we would have climbed miles into the mountains if we had taken her route.

We like it when she says “recalulating” as we turn off to fill up with gas. Then there are the long quiet spells when we think Gladys has fallen asleep. 

We purposely play tricks on her, taking a road which may not be the best or the quickest, but it is a road we know that will get us there. 

It is amazing how much information can be stored in such a little black box. Gladys literally has the capacity to give directions all over the world, if one has the right programming. We didn’t want to overload her to start so we just installed roads we might be using.

This even stumped her a few times as we crossed the  border to Mexico. The road we took south was one which crossed the border at Tecate. Then there was Mexico 3 that headed us to Ensenada.

Gladys correctly told us to stick to Mexico 3 and we traveled for over an hour and a half without much conversation. But when we arrived at Ensenada she got confused. 

It was partly our fault because we drove past an R.V. park which looked nice and we decided to turn around and take a closer look. The park was just what we were looking for, one facing out to the sea and not too crowded. To get there we needed to make one more u turn and after that, Gladys just went silent. We are not sure if our driving just upset her or her programming asked her to switch to Spanish, but there has not been a peep out of her since.