This is the approximate route I will be taking on the way to New Orleans. The little flags are where I'm either meeting someone, or staying over a night (or both). It shows me starting in SF only because I was lazy in making it, and I already know the way to SF -- which offers me a segue into the subject of maps.
One thing you learn fairly early on...usually on your first motorcycle trip out of familiar territory... is that it is difficult to read maps while riding a motorcycle. People have made all sorts of attempts to create useful map holders that secure a folded map under plastic onto the tank or windshield, but none of these has ever offered a very useful solution. Maps never have the correct resolution to be read at a distance of some three feet or so by a pair of eyes being buffeted around by mother nature.
The alternative followed by many, including myself, has been just to "wing it" and find out where you are (and how far away from your intended target you are) when you get there. Generally, this is an OK if not entirely satisfactory approach. Its primary advantage is that it adds to the romance of the 'travelling the open road/adventure' aspect of motorcycle touring and does, in fact, result in your going places you never would have thought about going. It is not as dumb as it might sound at first to the uninitiated. Its drawbacks become most noticeable, however, when you find yourself in the middle of AbsolutelyNowhere Nevada at 11:00 at night and wish you were A) at a gas station so that you could go somewhere else B) at a restaurant or C) at a motel and in bed. On balance I decided some time ago to let the serendipitous adventure happen within a more controlled context, and to have some reasonable idea of where I was and where I was going at any given time. Which brings us back to maps.
The other highly irritating thing about maps and motorcycles is that on any trip of any real length (other than through Texas) you are constantly discovering that you have driven off the edge of the map. Map makers seem unusually fixated on the concept of artificial political boundaries. It seems to matter not a whit to them that you want to get from Lee Vining, California across Nevada and wind up in St. George Utah. They will happily take you to the state line, whereupon they abruptly abandon you with no recourse but to find a gas station and purchase another map. Gas stations, it seems, are equally fixated on political boundaries and cheerfully make available maps of where they are. They also do not seem to realize or care that many people (depending on the state, often justifiably) wish to cross over their little patch of the world and be somewhere else. So you buy a map that gets you to the next state line, and then repeat the process.
As early as 1924, Rand-McNally recognized this problem, having -- with a typical New Yorker's view of the world -- started out their map-making business with the world map "New York City and Vicinity". (You learn fascinating things researching a trip: Did you know, for example, that -- counter-intuitively -- Rand McNally did not make maps of our highway system, but rather helped the government make our highway system match the maps they made? They got the government to implement a highway numbering system they made up from whole cloth, so their maps would make sense to purchasers. They even went around putting up highway signs so that the numbers on the ground would match those on their maps! Ingenious, and so very American. If you can't get Mohammed....) Anyway, the Atlas did not help the motorcyclist, either in its nascent form in 1924, in glorious color in 1960, or in the full modern style of 2010. Manipulating an 18 square inch paperback book on a motorcycle is worse than working with the simple map; plus, where ya gonna put it when you've already filled every nook and cranny of the bike with useful stuff like tools and spare parts, bottled water and socks?
No, it turned out there was no good answer for the motorcyclist until the Department of Defense loosened its death grip on the Global Positioning Satellite System, and Moore's Law resulted in the biggest directionally challenged individual with a few discretionary bucks to spend being able to tell you where he is anywhere on the planet within a couple of feet! The GPS has arrived!
The state of the art GPS device is a miracle, albeit one with a few idiosyncrasies that must be accommodated if one is intending not to wind up in the Pacific Ocean but rather at its shores. For one thing, its extant maps are not perfect, and although I doubt the marketing story that 18% of America's highways change every year, surely there is some change which must be anticipated and accounted for (by updating your map info at considerable cost). But nevertheless, securely fastened to my handlebars via an ingenious multi-swivel device, and plugged into my 12 Volt power outlet (...well OK, installing that was another expense), the GPS more or less guarantees that I will know exactly where I am at any given moment. Whether this is going to be useful information to me or not is one of the things I will find out on this trip. (Reminds you of the old joke about the balloonist asking the lawyer to tell him where he was?)
In fact, the reason you haven't heard from me here for a while is that I have been installing this wonder on The Bike and trying to figure it out. I haven't figured out yet exactly how its going to get me from here to New Orleans, although I have some hope. For starters, I found out that it lets you tell it where your "favorite" locations are, and then when you punch the button that says "Go There" it gives you step-by-step directions as you go along. So I typed in "New Orleans" and punched "Go There". [Fn. If a location is one of your "favorites" you'd think you'd already know how to get there, wouldn't you? I think this may be the geographical equivalent of the concept of "friendship" on Facebook. I'll learn to live with it.]
One of the first things you learn about these devices is that the lady who is giving you directions (yes it BOTH draws a map and tells you where to turn, just like your mother-in-law) seems to get a bit petulant when you fail to follow them. She and I discovered this not too far out of the driveway on this first attempt to find New Orleans, when she expressed a preference that I turn right, and I --admittedly with the benefit of local knowledge-- turned left. As she patiently informed me of several opportunities where I could make a U-turn, but failed to do so, she appeared to get more and more upset. It wasn't that her voice changed; in fact, it was the fact that it did not change that I found distrubing. You know that "conversation" you get into with someone close to you -- let's just say a spouse, for convenience -- when she is giving you directions? Well its that controlled, flat, un-inflected, very precisely enunciated tone....you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know very well that you have erred, and there's just no use talking about it.
The second thing you learn is that there are many, many ways to get from Caspar to New Orleans, many of which -- often the most attractive -- are not the GPS device's first choices. I learned that we need to shorten our vision here, and perhaps just ask it to guide us as far as --lets say -- Sacramento, whereupon we will regroup and formulate a new objective. In truth, it is probably OK to punch in a local address and follow the GPS directions getting there...I mean, how lost can you get? But apparently more detailed planning is necessary on your end of the stick when talking about long-range targets. Important clue: many of the less expensive devices out there do not permit this and limit you to how they (the devices) believe you should proceed. Do not purchase these, they will drive you insane very quickly.
Fortunately, having researched this ahead of time, I made certain that my little unit could take ".gpx" files and express them as a travel route and directions. Therefore, I can (in theory) sit down at this computer I am at right now, call up the appropriate software, and create a planned route using MapQuest or other of the mapping software systems out there, export it as a file into my GPS and I'm home! (Well, actually, successfully away from home -- the GPS unit is as good as a rental trail-horse in getting you back to the stable.) Thus can I predetermine the route I wish to take: I can continue to be "...the master of my fate...the captain of my soul" and not be haplessly dependent on the GPS to anticipate (usually wrongly) my route preferences.
Of course, nothing is that easy. For one thing, since I adamantly refuse to use Windows unless absolutely compelled, none of the readily available software works for me. While most other major software systems now accommodate Linux operating systems, the leading company in the GPS field -- Garmin -- does not: In fact, it continues to turn its nose up at its Apple users. Tch,tch! But there are ways around this. Astoundingly, the easiest and most straightforward mapping system is that maintained on-line by the Harley-Davidson Co. as a service to its devotees. I am saved. The MoCo and I, together, can create a .gpx file I can download onto my GPS device.
Whether this will in fact work will be the subject of ongoing discovery and commentary as this blog unfolds. In the meantime, as the map above shows, I have my course charted, and its now on to discover the devil in the details to come. Happy Trails!
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