If you’re going to follow a route someone else mapped (like an adventure touring route) you’ll be using navigation software and a GPS. Paper maps are fading. For better or worse, we’ve all been thrust into the e-world.
I’m very much in favor of pure GPS devices. Pure GPS devices receive satellite signals but can’t send. Just like your FM radio receives a signal but can’t transmit one. It cannot tell anyone anything about you. They’re totally private. If you’ve got a handheld GPS in your pocket while you bury Jimmy Hoffa, nobody cares. (Wipe the device’s memory after you’ve done whatever stupid thing you did!)
A true GPS will NEVER need a data plan. They NEVER need cell service. They NEVER require a monthly subscription. They’re satellite receivers and little else. Half the time your cell phone is using cell towers and acting as if it was using the constellation of GPS satellites. You might think it’s the same bit it’s not.
A handheld GPS is best because it will provide you with navigation information and nothing else. You may ignore it, value it, or discard it. You’re in charge. Single purpose GPS devices are getting edged out of the market by cell phones that do everything and just happen to do navigation too.
I have a Garmin Dakota 20. It’s nothing special. It’s about 10 years old. It runs on AA batteries. They’re discontinued but cheap (prices hovering at $100 on Amazon). Uploading information to the device is not user friendly but I’ve managed to load it with anything from routes to satellite imagery. All I need is a USB cable and some swearing. Years ago I had an Etrex that I wore out. They make upgraded variants of Etrex but I haven’t used one.
My Dakota has a small screen… as was once common of all of GPS units. It’s fine for slow stuff like elk hunting or canoeing. It’s suboptimal at motorcycle speeds. I find myself stopping at key junctures to take a gander. I’m ok with that because it has considerable advantages over a cell phone:
Heed my warning about electronic navigation; a phone is not your friend and it doesn’t work the same as a GPS receiver. A phone is a payment plan, vice on your balls, and an unbreakable link to remote dopamine manipulation. Your phone was not designed or programmed with your best interests in mind. Cell phone navigation entails subtle hazards to your soul.
Everyone and their dog uses a smartphone as a navigation device. I don’t. You don’t have to either. Humans need not be herd animals. I humbly suggest you think very carefully about what you’re letting the device do to you. Yes, that’s how it should be phrased; the device is doing things to you. Cell phones do evil things. They didn’t have to become what they are, it’s the monsters that program them that are evil. Regardless of how it happened, that’s where the technology went.
A smart phone is always doing insidious things. It’s tracking your every move. Even worse, it’s manipulating your head. Is it queuing up the next ad for something to sell you? Is is cross referencing the local weather to sell you a rain jacket? Suppose you glance and the sky and think “meh, it’s no big deal”… will the phone send you a heightened weather alert that supplants your judgement? Will the alert apply to the place you’re actually occupying or is it tuned to make pussy suburbanites 200 miles away lose their shit? Will it convince you to bail out too soon because global warming something something something? Will a raincoat ad make you feel like a moron for having forgotten your jacket? Will it do the opposite; tell you how sunny it is at your hometown and encourage you, hundreds of miles away, to ignore dark clouds and mosey right into a maelstrom?
Will the clock display make you rush past cool things? What if your boss texts? Or your girlfriend? Or your accountant? Will screen wallpaper of the Grand Canyon blind you to the subtle beauty of a 50′ deep ravine?
A cell phone will work very hard to isolate you from the reality of your natural environment. It will substitute instead a false reality. They’re surprisingly good at it.
Suppose you’re at the juncture of two trails. You’re pondering the choice before you. At a strictly local level all you know is that one path has a pretty fern and the other goes uphill. It’s a magic moment. These are the moments we are free. Savor it!
Suddenly a notification blinks on the cell phone map. It’s front of your monkey eyes and you read it without even thinking about it. Politician X just got caught stealing money from orphans and selling cocaine to puppies. Someone on F***book is pissed right off about it. She says “if you’re not outraged it means you’re not paying attention” hashtag PuppyGate! Now you have a new opinion about that politician and possibly the virtue signaling NPC that posted about it. Did any of that benefit you? Aren’t you less in the moment? You’re physically in nature but your brain is removed. It’s thinking about some shithead in Congress. Did you just forget about the neat fern?
Suppose you’re about to start a campfire to warm up over lunch. Suddenly you see Aunt Gladys virtue signaling about Ukraine. Meanwhile, Judy, an old high school friend, is preening about vegan food. Gladys is a fat dumbass that can barely waddle past the refrigerator. You just climbed a mountain. At this place and at this time Gladys doesn’t merit your consideration. She couldn’t get here, she’s never been here, she doesn’t know shit about what you’re doing or why. You have earned, through physical effort, a Gladys free moment. You begin to work on the fire but now you feel judged because you brought beef jerky as a snack. You had some dried apples but you forgot them. Fucking Judy would never forget the apples. That skinny bitch hasn’t eaten a full meal since 2015! Meanwhile Gladys thinks driving her Escalade to the park in downtown Detroit is “nature”! A cell phone allowed the two of them to fuck up your peaceful lunch.
See how quickly you wind up losing the subtle connection to your world?
Cell phones also make you dumb. It doesn’t take much to get a monkey to make sub-par decisions. Suppose you change your path from county X to county Y because the mountain pass is slippery, that’s a totally legit decision based on conditions on the trail. A warning about the higher official COVID transmission levels in county Y might nudge your mind into staying the course. Will you faceplant in the slippery snow because of some obscure CDC statistic that has nothing to do with your situation in the hinterland?
I can think of an thousand examples and they happen all the time. If you’re trying to be at one with the universe, isn’t an Amber Alert from fucking Boise the worst possible thing that could happen to you? You’re not in Boise… but now you’re thinking about it. Poor little Suzy has been kidnapped by a jerk driving a Lexus. Did you need to know about it? What good is it to inform you, some dude in the middle of a fucking canyon, about the Lexus in Boise? What clarity of mind did you just lose?
If you catch a trout is it the right thing to take a photo for external validation on social media? Even if it’s just a trout, you’ve killed a mortal being. Is it not nobler to fry it up in peace. Eat the fish in harmony with the cycle of life. Isn’t that better for both of you than killing the thing on TicTok so some dipshit in Baltimore can pass judgement on your fish based diet?
You don’t have to take my word for it. Test yourself. Jam your phone down to the bottom of your daypack below your GORP and the water bottle. It’s still there in case you have “an emergency” just like the flashlight you stashed in the same spot. The phone and the flashlight should fade from your consciousness as you go about your day. Does the phone fade? You won’t spare a single brain cell over the flashlight. Is the same true of the phone? If not; you know the thing is doing you harm.
Using a cell phone for navigation is dangerous. It gives our overwrought dopamine addicted society another vector of attack on your inner peace.
One last note, cell phones strapped to motorcycle handlebars have exactly the kind of lifespan you’d expect of a delicate expensive device strapped to a jackhammer in the rain. There are elaborate mounting mechanisms and everyone uses them. They work until they don’t.
Everyone eventually bitches that the screen got cooked in the desert sun or it got wet in the rain or a bird shit on it or whatever. If you just cracked the screen on a $100 GPS it’s a lot cheaper than nuking a phone.
As always, feel free to ignore everything I say. YMMV. Etc…
A.C.