Cartoportation
08 Jul 2015Map-Teleportation
In a matter of minutes I was ‘cartoported’ from 2015 to circa 1980. It all started when I turned the Google Maps Navigator on. In a matter of 10 minutes I was totally disoriented as to where I was going. This was exacerbated by the season of the year. Sunset quickly turned to night. I only wished it was summer time where sunset can be experienced at 20:15 and not 17:58. The sacrifice I had made for some costly mobile data was about to count for nothing.
The first mistake
was over-reliance on the battery life of a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini. At
35% you’d think you still have some hours of ‘play-time’ with the
gadget. Two hours maybe, but that’s before you turn on GPS with
‘Locating method’ set to highest. Add to the mix a bumper-to-bumper
traffic jam, and the ETA starts to increase, the distance falling at a
snail’s pace.
I am one for no fiddling with a gadget while driving (#itcanwait), so I ignored the thing and enjoyed the diversity of cars passing left and right. The battery low warming was drowned by the engine sounds all around. Even if I had heard it, it didn’t matter because I had no in-car charger.
Stop and Look
5km or less after off-ramping from the busy national road into an
arterial road, the phone went dead. Disorientation quickly set in. The
comfort of just listening to “in 500 m take the left exit” was gone. I
tried to remember; What was that road again that I was supposed to
branch to? Was I to turn right or left after the third street? I
quickly realised I didn’t remember and the information boards were only
confirming what I already knew and not the finer detail I sought - when
am I supposed to make that left?
As it turned dark, I stopped at a Caltex fuel/ service station. After strolling the place a bit, I found the favour of a petrol attendant whom a later entrusted with my trusty Galaxy. Ten minutes was the most I was gonna allow myself to remain ‘deaf’. I had already accumulated considerable time since my battery had died.
Cartography By Hand 101
The 10 minutes recharge (with the wrong charger) got me 15% of charge. I
had pen and paper ready as I switched the phone on. I wrote down key
contacts, turned on Location, ran the Maps app, searched my address and
did my sketching. I think I did well. You be the judge… 
I got my confidence back. Drove slower to as to glance at the sketch now and then.
In all this I learnt that one with a variety of tools in their toolbox is at an advantage.
#postscript
- You probably have looked at the ‘survival’, must-haves for your car but the pen and paper do come in handy. So does some Cartography skills.