How do you navigate

jodog said:
With two GPS units, google maps, waze, and apple maps I just sit back and listen to them argue. Make a U-turn, make a U-turn .....

I'm only sure of where to go when at least three devices agree.
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I will see your tech devices and raise you a wife with a paper map. Guess which one I should have listened to (hint: there are no right answers :biggrin:)
 
I could drive to an emergency farm call, in the middle of the night, to a place i had only been to a couple of years before. No problem!! I have pretty good ability to know which way to turn even if I don't know N,S,E,W. However, get me in a shopping mall and if I don't take notes of the entrance number where I came in, I may never get out!
 
So it seems 'natural navigation' isn't taught anymore...

Already mom drilled one to memorize things like "... at the mailbox keep left, after the tobacconist right, and that grey/white building behind that tree is home..."
Pops OTOH unveiled the world of roadmaps "... north is always on top..."
My apprentice days where filled with co-pilot duties, 6~8 service appointments a day, look up the address in the city atlas, voicing 'pacenotes' to the driver, great fun...:cool:
Then there was army training, military maps are a class of their own, the nation is divided into segments, there watersheds, etc...
Then came scuba diving, finding your way back is kinda vital for survival, hence memorizing unique 'landmarks' important...
For passing my cab license after that, I even had to verbally list the way i.e. from the airport to the hotel XYZ from the top of my head to the examiner...
Same for riding, church tower there, mountain ridge here, a creek aside, railroad lines, power pylons...
Navigate in rural areas, seek a village, continue to the church as they're always at the main square, so there will be signposts...

And as Europe is pretty much a peninsula, one cannot get lost on an ST1100... just make a turn once you hit a coast, done...
 
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I've always been a map guy. Since I've been lost a couple of times on Forest Service roads on my new Yamaha Super Tenere, I finally broke down and bought a Garmin Zumo XT2.
I just got it a couple of days ago. They are on sale right now for $449. I'm waiting on my MotoPumps mounting bracket to come in so I can mount it up. The bracket that comes with it is pretty lame. Hopefully the learning curve for this old man won't be too steep.
 
baby hummingbirds are just like our kids; lazy they stick it out because we keep the feeders out, they say, don't feed the wildlife, same applies to these guys [and girls] they don't get a free pass either, I'm as guilty as the rest for keeping them here [and alive during the cold period] fostering dependency comes at a price
 
Jay547 said:
I still use a paper map most of the time. It helps that I've been a land surveyor since 1979.
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Me too. New atlas periodically. Fits into a saddle bag easily. On unfamiliar routes, I tape the relevant page to the tank for reference. Since most of my road trips are along rural routes, this works fine. If I did more of my travelling through crowded/complex roads, I would consider a GPS.
This does require keeping up with the mileage ridden to simplify locating rural navigation features...intersections, road number changes and such.
Our trips are 'get aways', so the paper map with a few felt-tipped highlights works fine. Except for the few times a drunk has taken out a key highway/intersection marker.
 
I don't get lost very much.
Back in the day, as a youngster in the Navy (pre-GPS for civilians), we would always take road trips in New England, with a dedicated navigator holding the charts... er, paper maps.
Now that I've been using Garmins for countless years, I still enjoy looking at a REAL map. When stopped, of course.
That's what I like about using GPS on the bike. Lots less stopping!
I still enjoy going to new places, without fear of getting lost. And if I do... I'll eventually find myself again.
 
In the good ol' days, I just knew where I was going. I grew up exploring all the roads of Tacoma, Wa and knew it well. If I didn't know where something was, I looked at a map. Now the area has grown up so much, I don't bother carrying paper maps anywhere. It's a GPS, whether on the bike with a Garmin XT, or in the car on a smartphone.

When I plan a trip, I use Google Maps. I'll first tell it where I want to go, and it'll give me a couple choices. Almost always, I'll turn off the use of freeways and then see what it comes up with. And then I'll start adding in waypoints to force the route where I want it to go. Street View is handy. Often when I'm crossing some sparsely populated areas, there will only be a couple choices for roads. And then I can look at the actual view from the road to pick the most scenic ones.

When I'm done, I set the route up on the GPS. I do it simply by first making a waypoint at a gas station that I'll need to stop at. That's usually enough, but if I need more I add them in. It takes a lot less time for me than trying to get into a program on the computer.

Chris
 
I still like a paper map on my tank bag to get a sense of where I'm going, distance scale, and what else is around me. I like the Garmin directions coming through my headset when getting to a motel or restaurant in a new town.
 
I had to give a ride to my helper the other day who remarked that my truck had one of the best touch screens and asked why I wasn't linking it to my phone and using it for nav around town I had to explain that I just hated it, hated looking at it, hated having to adjust my climate control on it, hated trying to add another radio station to it and had reoccurring dreams of punting it through the uprights [not that I'm a field kicker, or even envision being one on tv, but if I was... :roflmao-2x:
I will never sell any of the vehicles I have left; even if they start spying on me;; when I look at the dial or the slide lever, or the buttons that control the same old dampers in the same old air boxes; I know where they are , and when I want to adjust them, I don't take my eyes off the road, I know their initial position
what's the expression these days, do you feel me? I get it [oh yeah] and paper maps for me
 
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