"G.P.S. ... strikes me as the electronic equivalent of the child in the back seat querulously asking, 'Are we there yet?'"

Ted Conover, in a NYT op-ed, looks askance at the navigation device for the car that his wife wants so badly. He prefers to engage with maps and even to get lost.

Yes, why are you driving, to get someplace, or just to go?

When I was a teenager, with a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible, I used to go for a drive and deliberately get lost and then find my way back home. I still go for drives that way. This summer, I went to Colorado, and each day I got in my Audi TT Coupe and drove, making an intuitive choice at each turn and continuing until I was far enough away from my home base that I felt I needed to start finding my way back.

Conover:

I want to muse upon things other than numbers when I drive, want to cultivate a subconscious sense of where I am and where I'm headed, want to enjoy unmeasured moments of suspension between here and there.

"Are we there yet?" Some of us feel, when we're in that car, somewhere in the great American landscape, that we are there. That's our there.