American freeway interchanges are easy if English is your first language—usually well-signed with lots of advance warning, acceleration and de-acceleration lanes, rarely any water buffalo to avoid....

I bought a GPS after getting hopelessly lost in dark, rainy Italian cities a decade or so ago. I’ve used it to locate specific addresses in my home town, but never did install it on any of my bikes, and I left it at home during a year in Latin America. Sometimes on that trip I took advantage of other, better-prepared riders, but as often they followed their screen instructions into ridiculous situations which I, with paper maps, a good sense of direction, and willingness to ask directions, avoided.

Then I got temporarily lost in the mountains (on foot) for the first time in my life. I bought another GPS designed for hiking and climbing, but never learned how to use it. Finally, I tried to find my way around Vietnam last year, and after a particularly humiliating time in Hanoi I decided it was time I learned to use navigation apps on my phone....which brings me to the present moment in Lao. I’m using Maps.me and Google maps with varying degrees of success. Today I visited a remote site which I probably wouldn’t have dared look for without the phone to help locate me every five or ten minutes.

And that’s the problem. I still have a good sense of direction, and if I’m paying attention I seldom guess wrong. When I do, I can still ask directions from locals, even without speaking the language. But because I’ve got this technological wonder available I’ve stopped asking locals, and instead I check my phone with alarming frequency—just to reassure myself that I’ve got it right, and won’t have to retrace my steps over this 5000 foot pass (think: single lane dirt, stone and mud; steep grades, thousand foot drop offs, oncoming trucks....) to get back on track. And because I’ve got the technology, I’ve already stopped paying attention, which means I really do need the phone because I hardly even know which direction I’m headed much of the time. I don’t even have to learn local pronunciation, because I don’t need to name my destination to anyone (except police, which is another story).

It’s depressing: I’ve turned off my skill and intuition, instead relying on this very fallible technological fix—just like everyone else. And I get positively offended when it lets me down—for example, but sending me down a shortcut without mentioning that there’s no bridge across the very large river.

I’ll agree with the poster above: once near the Arctic Circle (or the Antarctic Circle, I suppose), a lot of the usual rules don’t apply. For example, sometimes the sun doesn’t set; sometimes it never rises. And once you cross either of the tropics, the sun spends a lot of time where you don’t expect it—yes, it’ll still rise in the east, but maybe it inhabits the northern sky all or most of the day. I found this so contrary to what I expected that I struggled to adjust.

Oh, and for what it’s worth it’ll be a long time before I get good enough to operate a GPS while riding my bike. Here, the locals all text like crazy while riding around at unreasonable speeds. Your husband and his truck are probably a different story.
Mark