GPS, Bluetooth, Hank Williams, and the real deal…

I landed at LAX just before lunch yesterday, and on the drive from the airport to my home I was thinking about how cool it would be to fire up my CSC motorcycle and head into the mountains for a ride.   It’s been too long.

Most of my recent travel has involved airplanes and automobiles, which is okay when the distances are great or the weather is bad.   A couple of new things (new to me, at least) that I’m getting used to are the GPS and Bluetooth phone systems.  My new Subie has a built-in GPS and a handsfree phone system.   Progress, I guess.  Or is it?

I haven’t decided if the GPS is a good thing or a bad thing.  It’s cool because it takes a lot of the stress out of driving in strange or new areas.   For example, when I was in Chicago a month or so ago, the rental car GPS came in handy when I landed late at night and I had to drive 70 miles.  Driving through Chicago late at night could have been an adventure, but the GPS made it pain free.   I guess that’s a good thing.  What’s not a good thing it destroys my situational awareness.   I mean, if you think about it, I rode my California Scooter all the way down to Cabo San Lucas and back armed with only a map and my sense of direction.   I was fine with that.   I felt connected to wherever I was.

In the good old days, I used to have to think a lot about where I was and the lay of the land (and I was fine with that).   Now I just put my mind in neutral and wait for the GPS lady to tell me what to do.   Like I said, I‘m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.   I sometimes wonder what this kind of mental emptiness (floating from one destination to the next, waiting for someone to tell us what to do, with no responsibility for determining our own way) will do to us on a longer term basis.  Maybe I’m just thinking too hard.

The other new toy is the Bluetooth phone system.   Let me say at the outset that I hate cell phones.    We’ve become a nation of folks glued to those nasty little things.   I don’t like people who are loud on their cell phones, and it seems like that’s just about everybody.  Folks, we don’t want to hear your half of the conversation (take it outside, please).   Better yet, talk to the people you’re with.  And it bothers me when I see people thumb-diddling away on those little keyboards while ignoring the people they’re with.   Put the cell phone away and have a real conversation, face to face, like a normal person.  Whatever you’re doing on email or Facebook or some other mind-numbing empty-headed activity can’t be as important as looking other folks in the eye and talking with them.

Okay, back to the Bluetooth.  The deal with it is you can use your cell phone without having to hold it…the thing just takes my voice commands and calls whoever I tell it to call.  The good part is that I don’t need to break the law and hold my cell phone when I’m driving.   I hate it when I see people doing that because I know they’re not paying attention, and when you ride a motorcycle, seeing cell phone freaks on the highway is downright scary.   What I find with my car’s new Bluetooth system, though, is that I make a lot more phone calls than I used to just because I can.  It breaks up the drive.   When I used to see folks jabbering away in their cars all the time, I always wondered what in the world they were talking about.   Now I know…it’s mostly nothing.  They’re just killing time.  

Anyway, if it was up to me, I’d do away with cell phones altogether.    They bother me.   I don’t want to be that accessible, and I don’t want to hear other peoples’ cell phone conversations.   The human race seemed to do okay for a long time without cell phones.   I think we would do just fine marching into the future without them.

So….by now you’re probably tired of my rant, and I’ll turn back to motorcycle stuff.   Here’s a quick video of a Baja Blaster ride along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in my neighborhood (with a brief pop at the end to clear out the carbon).    If you’re new to the blog, the Baja Blaster is my CSC 150 Classic.  I’ve been riding that little hot rod for a little over three years now, and it just keeps getting better and better.

Ah, my knees in the breeze….no Bluetooth, no GPS, no interruptions, and only the sound of the wind rushing by and the CSC 150 engine.   The real deal…just the way life is supposed to be.