Wayfinding atrophy? Blame GPS

HALLIE EPHRON: I admit it, I am directionally challenged. Right now I’m in NYC and it’s particularly obvious. I keep coming up out of the subway and heading the wrong way. East for West. North for South.

Fortunately for me, New Yorkers are incredibly patient and generous and do not roll their eyes when you stop them and ask, “Can you tell me, please, am I facing North?” as you stare down Sixth Avenue at the needle-nosed One World Trade Center.

I haven't always been, as they say, lost in familiar laces. I used to be able to come up out of the subway (the lines had letters: BMT, IRT, IND) and know instinctively which direction I was facing. Which meant for 90% of the time (barring lower Manhattan and the Village where the original cow paths defy right angles), I could  find pretty much any address without a map.

Now, I come up into the light of day and, whichever way I go, it’s always wrong. Even when I KNOW I’ll be wrong and reverse my assumptions… I’m still wrong. Even after I pull up walking directions on my phone, I go the wrong way.

This is not my fault. I blame GPS. 

I was fine finding my way all those years when I HAD to rely on my judgment. HAD to read a real map without a moving YOU ARE HERE button on it. HAD to notice landmarks along the way so I’d be able rewind my route and find my way home.

Now with GPS, I believe that as a result of all this ‘help,’ my natural way-finding ability has atrophied.

It's all that time spent on automatic pilot, staring at that little screen and following its instructions to "turn around when possible." My only worry: when it tells me “in 100 feet, turn right,” how far ahead is 100 feet.

What has improved is my relationship with my husband. In our household, I’m the designated driver (he grew up in Brooklyn and didn’t learn to drive until it was…too late. He drives like a beached whale, and only does it when he has to.) Used to be, he’d be in the passenger seat, juggling a massive fold-out map and trying to direct, and I’d be yelling “Shouldn't I turn here?” or “What do you mean turn right? It’s one way.” This would be compounded by the fact that he gets left and right confused.

So how’s your internal compass these days? As reliable as your GPS?

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Rhys anticipates Valentine's Day

RHYS BOWEN:

Since Valentine’s Day is approaching I thought I’d write a piece about my adorable husband, who is definitely from another planet. You’ve heard about men are from Mars, right? Mine is from a galaxy far far away…

I love him, but …..

I know what I am getting for Valentine's Day. Ten years ago when we moved into this condo he went to the dollar store and bought a heart shaped balloon and plastic roses. He gave them to me that year and every year since. Unfortunately the balloon still has not gone down. So I know he'll dust it off again.

For Christmas three of our four children gave us Alexa. Have you seen that video of the old man and Alexa?  Just like John.  He addresses her like this, “Alexa, would you please see if you can find Benny Goodman and play him for us?”

The sentence is too long and confused and she shuts off.

We say “John, you don’t need to say please. She’s a machine. You say Alexa, play Benny Goodman!”

But he doesn’t get machines.  We were driving with the GPS in the car when we first came to Phoenix. It said “Take a left on Bell.”  He wanted Greenway so he turned left on Greenway. GPS doesn’t like this.

“Make a right on 40^th Street.”

He keeps on driving.

Recalculating. Turn right on 39^th Street.

Recalculating. Turn right on 38^th Street.   And so on. When we got to Twentieth Street I said, “For God’s sake turn it off.”

And he said, “SHE’S GOT TO LEARN.”

ME. SCREAMING “SHE’S A MACHINE. SHE WON’T LEARN.”

You can see what I put up with!  But there is more that makes me think he’s from a different planet.

 He always is the first reader of my new books. He read the upcoming Georgie book and I’ve written, “To quote Jane Bennett ‘how shall I bear such happiness?’  and he said WHO IS JANE BENNETT?

I’m sorry but that should be grounds for divorce. Right above mental cruelty. It’s not as if he’s not been exposed to Jane Bennett. The Colin Firth edition of Pride and Prejudice has played in our house with monotonous regularity. Our granddaughters, when asked what movie I should put on for them, always answered “Pride and Prejudice, please.” They grew up quoting “Other way, Mr. Collins.”

But my husband, alas, has been oblivious to this. And the other day I was watching the Princess Bride and he told me he had never seen it and thought it silly.

Inconceivable. Again grounds for divorce.

He does have other quirks that make me think he has not actually joined the twenty-first century. I needed cellophane to gift wrap a basket for an auction. “You don’t need to go out,” he said. “We have some.”  And he produced… drop roll please…. Glad wrap.

On another occasion (and I think I’ve shared this one) I told him I would be going to some cold places on my book tour and needed to buy some tights. “You can borrow mine,” he said.

“You wear tights?” I asked, slightly surprised because I hadn’t noticed any signs of cross-dressing.

“Of course.”  He went to his closet and appeared with… another drum roll…a pair of men’s long johns. The fleecy kind.

I think actually that his brain was frozen right after World War II, either that or he really is from another planet. Or do all men think differently? Other examples please!

Which Way Do I Go? by Jenn McKinlay

You think you know a person. But do you ever, really? I’ve been long time friends with mystery writer Kate Carlisle. We met while signing at the Poisoned Pen and bonded over pre book signing salads (okay, it was Bloody Marys, but in our defense there are a lot of vegetables in there) and we’ve been tight ever since. Clearly, showing up marginally inebriated at a book signing is a bond that can’t be denied.

Anyway, when our conference schedules, line up, we like to room together so we can talk shop, throw plots at each other, and otherwise pal around. Naturally, when we knew we were both going to Bouchercon in Toronto, we shacked up. Now up until now, I have been able to keep a secret from Kate, but on this trip my subterfuge gave out and she discovered my dark secret…

I have zero sense of direction. Zip, Zero. Nada. I might as well live in a black hole because I have no idea where I’m going ninety percent of the time. The jig was up with Kate the third time I left our hotel room and went the wrong way to get to the elevator.

“Turn around, sweetie, you’re headed for the ice machine,” she said. “Again.”

Thus, my inability to find my way out of a paper bag was revealed. 

Turns out the party responsible for my inability to navigate is my brain. According to an article from Scientific American:"After wandering around an unfamiliar part of town, can you sense which direction to travel to get back to the subway or your car? If so, you can thank your entorhinal cortex, a brain area recently identified as being responsible for our sense of direction. Variation in the signals in this area might even explain why some people are better navigators than others."

You can read more here: Sense of Direction

So how about you, Reds? Do you have a good sense of direction or are you perpetually taking the scenic route like me?

LUCY BURDETTE: Aha, you've stumbled onto a major marital disagreement in our home. My family and I think we are gifted in the directional field, and John thinks we are duds. He's always surprised when we disagree on what waiting to turn and come to find out that I was correct. He calls my brother "gyro"--short for gyroscope, as he likes to tease him about his sense of direction too. I will admit that I can't find my way around Venice (Italy) as I find their winding streets impenetrable. But give me Rome, New York, or Paris and I am your girl!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Horrible. Horrible. I am so bad at directions that if I say: "I am always wrong, so I think it's this way, so let's go that way," I'm STILL WRONG.  Maps, I can read them, and direct people just fine, but it doesn't translate spatially, somehow. In hotels? I am ALWAYS wrong, and now consciously figure out which way to turn and try to remember that (toward the fire extinguisher, or away from the staircase sign) , otherwise, it doesn't matter how many times I try it, I'm wrong. It kind of bothers me. I have good instincts about other things, but dead reckoning somehow passed me by.  You and me, sister Jenn. Can you imagine us together?

JENN: Oh, wow, you are my people, Hank! I am ALWAYS WRONG, too. Scenic route, we're definitely taking the scenic route.

INGRID THOFT: Stick with me, Jenn and Hank.  I have a stellar sense of direction.  I credit my father, who was excellent at navigating, too.  I’m great with maps, GPS, and, essentially, just knowing if A is over here, and K is over there, G will be here.  During the Phoenix Bouchercon, Chevy Stevens and Carla Buckley nicknamed me Head Goose; they knew if they fell into formation behind me, they’d arrive at their desired destination.  The one place that throws me off my game?  A wooded town not far from Seattle on the other side of Lake Washington.  My hubby’s office is there, and I think it’s the universe’s way of keeping me humble!

JENN: I'll fall in line with you anytime, Head Goose! LOL - that's adorable!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm in the good sense of direction camp, although perhaps not so well-developed as Ingrid's! I only just got a smartphone in 2015, so before then, all my navigating was done with maps and bushwhacking. Can you see the sun and shadows? Okay, you have east and west, and from that north and south. If you have a map in your head of the major roads in your area- the county highway and the Turnpike, say - then you aim yourself toward one of those. I guess the important part of all that is "map in your head." 

JENN: Yeah, you lost me at "map in your head". I, too, got a smart phone in 2015 and it's been helpful, when I choose to believe the GPS, which for some reason I don't, so we spend a lot of time doing "legal U-turns" and "recalibrating routes". 

JULIA: The one place my directional sense failed me completely? Driving around Seattle. Having lived in Maine for nearly all my adult life, with the Atlantic to the east and New Hampshire's White mountains to the west, I kept getting turned around between the Pacific and the Cascade range. "Water is East!" my brain insisted. "Mountains are West!" I was like a bird without magnetism, flapping fruitlessly in circles.

HALLIE EPHRON: Oh well, Seattle is impossible. Weren't the streets on those 'hills' deliberately routed so the families who 'ruled' them didn't have to drive through each other's neighborhoods? And Venice! When we were there the vaporettos were on strike and we had to walk everywhere. Often in circles (haven't we been on this bridge before?)

I used to have a great sense of direction but now I'm like Hank. Always exactly wrong, and even when I turned it around and go the opposite way of what I think, I'm wrong. It all began at the Grand Hyatt in NYC. It feels to me as if it's on the SOUTH side of 42nd St and I orient everything that way. Now, even when I read a map, I get it upside down and backwards.

JENN: Okay, then, if we're ever in Seattle, Head Goose is in charge!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I like maps. I can usually read maps without having to hold them upside down! And I have usually prided myself on my sense of direction, especially after wandering my way around London with nothing but an A to Z (That's pronounced "A to Zed", by the way) for years. But I've had a couple of major failures. There was the time I hired a car at Heathrow  and then circumnavigated the airport for TWO hours trying to get on the road to Henley. That I blame entirely on the stupid SatNav and the lack of an actual paper map. Once I found a place to stop (not easy on English roads), turned off the SatNav, and bought a proper map, I made it to Henley in half a hour.

But then there was last year in London, which I can blame on nothing but myself. I'd convinced a long-suffering friend to meet me for dinner at a place I wanted to try, in a part of London I don't know well at all. I was turned around from the minute I got off the bus. Even with Google Maps on my phone, I somehow managed to walk miles in the wrong direction. Around and around in circles, three more buses (two of them going in the wrong direction) later,  I finally reached the restaurant, thirty minutes late. Maybe that was my Grand Hyatt moment, and I'll be confused from now on!

JENN: I opted not to drive in London, Debs, so I am in awe of you!

RHYS BOWEN: I have a good sense of direction but I'm married to a man with zero. We're driving through Phoenix which is completely on a grid and I say, "We go north on 24th Street" and he says "Which way is North?" and I say..."See that mountain? It's called NORTH MOUNTAIN. Does that give you a clue?"

But I have a Venice story: which I was a teenager my parents used to rent a little villa outside Venice. They'd drive onto the island, give me and my brother some money and say "See you at five o'clock." And we'd spend all day wandering the streets. So I knew them well. Years later I took my oldest daughter back. We started to walk around the city and suddenly I'd say, "Wait. If we go through that alleyway and cut behind that church we should find ourselves.... Yes! Short cut to Rialto." It all came back to me.

JENN: I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure out the Phoenix grid, Rhys. One year, maybe two? Ugh.

What about you, Readers? How's your navigational system or more precisely your entorhinal cortex?

This is your BRAIN on GPS...

HALLIE EPHRON: Confession: I used to be able to read a map. I could hold it out in front of me and say, "Here's me!" And "Here's where I want to go." And I'd be right and I could get there.

For long drives to places I'd never been, I'd print out directions. If my husband were traveling with me, he’d read the directions and I’d yell back at him, things like “What do you mean, turn right? That’s not a street…” Or if I were traveling alone I'd try to juggle the map and steer, very challenging in the daytime and nearly impossible at night.

I usually got there and often it was not pretty, but at least I had some sense of the path I’d taken to get there could usually retrace my steps without a hitch. Bonus points: the map in my head of known geography grew each time I ventured out as new, heretofore unknown geographies connected to known.

Now I rely on my GPS and follow its instructions, my sense of where I am has been reduced to the size of that tiny screen. I use my GPS driving. I use it walking. I follow where it tells me to go even when the directions are plainly wrong (easy to do in Los Angeles, for instance, where several streets by the same name, and unless you know the zip code you’re in trouble.) Nothing makes me more relaxed than knowing if I go wrong it will tell me, in the calmest possible tone of voice, "Turn around when possible."

Having a GPS has elevated taking long cuts to an art. Recently my husband I let it to guide us out of a mall parking lot to the local highway -- a distance of .4 miles which took us 5 minutes with a leisurely detour through the surrounding suburb. Zen. As long as my GPS doesn't crap out and then I am well and truly lost.

Do you use a GPS, and has your mental map of the world around you atrophied?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Love love love it. Usually.  When I am going to an event, at night, in an unfamiliar place, it is such a lifesaver. And it's made me realize how much of my energy in the past  was used thinking "what if I get LOST?!)  We have WAZE, which is miraculous, because it "knows" the traffic based on reports from other drivers. So sometimes WAZE will send us a way the we know is not the way we would have chosen--but "WAZE KNOWS!" I always say. And it really works.

GPS does take away the necessity to know where you are in the universe--because context really doesn't matter, it's just distance to destination. So if we are driving to Pick-a-town, we may have no idea if that's north, south, whatever.  And our  mental picture of our journey is blank.

Another downside: when a cab or Uber driver is using it to go somewhere--and they clearly have no idea where they're going. My favorite is when the Uber driver calls me on the phone and says--I'm outside your house, where are you?

And I say--No you're not, I'm looking out the window and I can't see you.

And the driver says: Well, GPS says I am at your house!
As if that's gospel!

We call our GPS "Jeeps." And bottom line--I am grateful for her every day.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: We live in New York City and don't own a car. So, no GPS. When we travel and drive, we use some kind of app on the phone which acts as a GPS.

HALLIE: Last time I was in NY I tried to use the GPS on my phone to get from the subway to a restaurant near Broadway/Lafayette. Such a confusing part of the city. The GPS scrambled my brain and I had to ask a woman passerby if I was walking North. She laughed and said she has the same problem, turned me around, and sent me on my way.

LUCY BURDETTE: We have a very old version of a GPS in the car. I have been known to yell at John: "Are you going to listen to that bitch, or are you going to listen to your wife?"
Rhetorical question of course. I still love maps and like to see where I am visually and where I'm going. But we often use the maps app on the iPhone to check on traffic and get to a specific destination. I don't miss having to print out those turn by turn directions and madly scramble to read them while driving. So I'm a hybrid I guess. And losing the ability to read a map reminds me of how kids aren't taught cursive in school any more. Sigh.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Oh, Lucy, I love that. Maybe you should get one with a male voice so it doesn't sound like John is being lured by some dame!

My sister Barb is the first person I knew who got a GPS, back when they were still very high-tech. She lives in the DC area and was always driving her two active boys all over the region for meets and lessons, not to mention her own volunteer activities. Problem was, she's terrible at navigation, and was always calling her husband Dan at work asking for directions. Remember OnStar? She had DanStar. So he got her a GPS unit for Christmas, along with a Bluetooth ear bud so she could hear it no matter how noisy the boys were. She used to say, "I just go where the voices in my head tell me."I don't have GPS, in part because I'm a Luddite, as I've mentioned before, and in part because ninety per cent of my driving is in southern Maine, where I've lived for almost twenty-nine years. Like New York City, the rural roadscape doesn't change much, and as long as you can remember local landmarks, you're fine. Ross and I have actually given each other directions that include phrases like, "Turn onto the street where the Boy's girlfriend used to live" and "First right after that spot where that old deserted house got torn down."

When traveling, I like maps and directions. Just as Hallie says, the map in my mind expands every time I drive someplace new. Despite being a scatterbrain, I'm an excellent navigator, and I usually find it relatively easy to arrive at my destination, Except Hank's house. Hank, your place is like a house in a fairy tale - impossible to find unless you've been guided there by its owner.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm a multi-user. I have GPS in my car, Google Maps on my phone--and, Hank, we have WAZE! But I love maps, and I never quite trust the GPS. Supposedly, people have even driven off cliffs while mindlessly obeying...  I was driving across Iowa and Nebraska on a book tour quite a few years ago, and GPS in the rent car kept telling me to turn off the highway in the middle of nowhere. I spent two days yelling, "No, I'm not getting off in the middle of a ****** cornfield, you maniac!"

I also think it's very scary that people are loosing any sense of geographical orientation. Another little brain part atrophied.

RHYS BOWEN: My IPhone is my best friend. And it talks to me in cultured British tones. I find these days that I don't bother to look up directions in advance. Just speak the address and off we go. The only time that didn't work was when I was at a conference in a strange city and followed directions to my publisher's party. It kept telling me that I had arrived but I couldn't see it. Finally I found out it was on the 20th floor! It has no direction for UP!

I also have navigation in my car which is useful to get a broader picture of where we are going. However, I am married to someone who does not trust GPS. We were driving through Phoenix once, where all streets are parallel. The GPS said, "Take Bell Road" but he wanted to take Greenway. So the GPS said "Recalculating. Take next right on 38th Street. Recalculating. Take next right on 37th Street. Recalculating...." You get the gist. Finally I exploded and said "Turn the damned thing off."  "She's got to learn," he said. "She's a bloody computer!" I yelled.

So there are those who are never destined to belong to the 21st Century!


HALLIE: So today's burning question: Is your GPS your BFF or is it atrophying the part of your brain that knows which end is UP?

The more things change, the more they actually DON'T stay the same

JAN BROGAN - We often talk about how great things used to be, and how today's rude drivers, bad manners, cell phones, etc. annoy us. 

It's not that I can't complain with best of 'em, it's that every once in a while it's a good idea to take deep breath and put it all in perspective. One thing I've learned in historical research, especially when I was looking back at the 1970s, is that some things actually improve and we don't notice  We all have a tendency take the improvements for granted and whine about what's not up to par.

 I  hear a lot of people today complain about young kids in the workforce. They can't write complete sentences. Their spelling is atrocious. They can't take criticism because they have been praised all their lives.

But I've been working on a writing project, interviewing eighteen people under thirty. What I've been struck by is their dedication. What I've also noticed in this group,  and in my kid's graduating classes, a lot of young people have a strong sense of "giving back" and doing something worthwhile for the world. All the emphasis on community service in high school and college - that I thought was a lot of resume padding - actually had an effect. These kids are willing to work for very little money to take jobs in really rough places to try to make them better.

In my generation, a lot of people talked about saving the world, but in this generation, a lot people are actually making sacrifices to try to do it.

So that's the one thing I've noticed is getting better today, (that and the ready availability of really good coffee) So how about you, what's the ONE thing you notice is improving?



HALLIE EPHRON: So Jan goes right to charity and good works. Where does my mind go? Food! Oh, gosh, I can remember when eggplant was considered a delicacy in the supermarket, along with soppressata and fava beans. And the only breads you could get were "brown" or "white." Now, if anything, there are too many choices. Vive la global economy! Not to mention local farms.

And remember when you had to watch where you stepped on city streets? I never thought people would scoop their poop, but they do. Or not smoke. Remember when the minute the lights went out in the movie theater someone lit up? And how men in the work place used to think it was fine to say the most embarrassing things to women. And you not only had to deal with telephone calls from people selling you something you didn't want, they came to the door! Yes, some things have changed for the better.

RHYS BOWEN: I will blend both Hallie and Jan's comments and say that we are more aware that we live on a fragile planet and have to husband resources. Until recently the earth was seen as a big candy store from which we could take what we wanted. Now we're recycling, conserving and going back to local farming. All good things. As is the whole world speaking English, making travel so easy.

Smaller good changes? Women not having to sit under a hair dryer in rollers, no more recipes that include cool whip, jello or cream of mushroom soup.

LUCY BURDETTE: Rhys, you're right about conserving resources. It wasn't too long ago that bringing in a reusable bag to the grocery store was considered the territory of a nut job. Now everyone has cloth bags--hurray!

But Hallie's right about food, as usual. Farmer's markets everywhere...and no one would consider serving slimy chop suey out of a can, the way my mom did. Do you remember that stuff? The only thing edible was the crunchy noodles that you sprinkled on top.

And although I know some people love old cars, I have to say new cars have improved a lot--more comfortable, safer, better mileage...I wouldn't go back to my old Dodge Dart!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I agree with all of the above (except I am terrible at actually remembering to take my reusable bags into the supermarket...) but Rhys's comments about sitting under hairdryers in rollers cracked me up. I would add, having come of age in the era of the blow-dryer, that I think flat irons for women's hair are a great boon to civilization. I used to iron my hair straight on the ironing board!


And I second no-more-chow-mein from a can, and at least fewer recipes calling for Cool Whip or Cream of Mushroom Soup.

But one of the changes I'm most grateful for in my lifetime is the ban on smoking in public places. Oh my gosh, especially traveling in the UK, where often there was no place to eat other than the local pub. You walked into a pall of smoke. Your eyes stung, your throat hurt, and then you couldn't get the smell out of your hair or your clothes... I consider Smoke Free a huge leap forward for mankind.


ROSEMARY HARRIS: Absolutely agree with Debs on smoke-free. I grew up with 3 smokers - it's no wonder I love the outdoors, I started going out on my own at age 8! I would add nutrition labeling on food. I don't know what I did before that...I had a little calorie booklet that I bought at the market. And I can't resist the mention of technology. I've driven over 20 hours in the last 8 days and I don't know what I would have done without the GPS.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ah, you don't have to get up to change the channel on TV? And you can watch whatever you want, whenever your want? Fine, maybe easier TV is not the one thing.  ATMs? On-line banking? I just read an article saying that deaths from traffic accidents have decreased--because cars are so much safer. Oh--sunscreen!
 
JAN BROGAN - See, life isn't so bad, after all. Tell us  Reds, what is the one thing you notice is getting better?

Which Way To Turn?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Just saying. If you and I are ever anywhere, and we're lost, don't look at me. I have no idea. My husband has learned not to go the way I insist is the right way, because it just isn't. But I am right often enough, by chance, not to be infallibly wrong, so we can't even count on that.

My dear pal and admired colleague Norb Vonnegut's wife is just the opposite. But let him tell you. And there are prizes in store!

NORB VONNEGUT: It's great to be back on Jungle Red. The last time was in 2009, when I explained the meaning of "hornet gak" and described how 5,000 flying, stinging, angry insects almost ate my first novel, Top Producer. It was, as you might guess, a terrifying start to my career as a writer.

I survived. My third novel, The Trust, is coming out this July. And now I'm working on my first piece of non-fiction with a co-author, who spent two years in jail. But I digress. Today, I really want to talk about travel mishaps.

You know what I mean. You're going someplace fun, someplace exotic, someplace to stretch out and recharge the batteries. There's adventure in the air. And boom—everything goes wrong. "The Human GPS" is a true and heroic story about my wife, Mary, who once fended off a marauding band of Venetian pirates.

What better way to launch into the summer than a discussion about travel misadventures, right? The idea for this post actually came from my longtime friend, Mark Sheehan, who is a travel writer living in Sydney, Australia.

Mark compiled a series of travel stories for his new book: Are Those Your Underpants on the Conveyor? Most proceeds will go toward a cure for cystic fibrosis, a cause that Mark has championed for decades.

When he asked me to contribute a short anecdote for the book, I jumped at the opportunity. The Human GPS is an early look at what's inside Mark's book, which releases later this summer.

So here's my question: Do you have a travel story?

Post a few lines here about your own misadventures, and I'll send a free paperback copy of The Gods of Greenwich to five people chosen at random by Hank.

And let's spice up the offer. I'll send a galley of The Trust to the first person who tells me something I don't know about Charleston, SC, where much of my novel takes place.

Enough already. Here's what happened to Mary and me in Venice.

 *****THE HUMAN GPS****

               By Norb Vonnegut

You know how we all have one special talent: the gift big enough to fill a room; or so subtle only our id knows for sure? I believe everybody has a knack, a flair, call it what you want. We each enjoy our own superpower.

My wife is a human GPS. You could drop Mary in the deepest, darkest Amazon rain forest, and she'd find her way home no problem. Urban sprawl is a piece of cake. She pooh-poohs electronic navigation systems when we're driving somewhere unfamiliar, finds the voices annoying no matter the gender or the accent. Mary grabs a map and takes over the navigation, which is fine from my perspective because I could get lost in our backyard.

There have been the occasional mishaps. We once drove to Gatwick, when our return flight to the USA was out of Heathrow. But that's another story, and Mary was diagnosed with chicken pox the day after we returned. So I'm inclined to think the circumstances were extenuating. Even Superman runs into the occasional case of kryptonite, right? 

This story is about Venice. The city is to tourists, I think, what the Himalayas are to mountain climbers. Don't get me wrong. I love the place. There just happen to be enormous challenges when touring the canals. And some are more serious than the navigation.

Several years ago, we were driving through Austria en route to Italy. And true to form, Mary was scrutinizing maps and reading a travel guide that described “marauding bands of Venetian pirates.”

“Watch out,” the guide warned. “There are thieves are everywhere.”

Duly alerted, we resolved to keep our eyes peeled. But the "marauding bands of Venetian pirates" became something of a running joke during our drive. For that matter, the warnings seemed overblown upon arrival. There was a state-of-the-art parking garage on the mainland outside the water taxi stand. It was well staffed and well organized, the picture of efficiency. I think 747s would be lucky to receive the kind of guidance our parking attendants offered that day. No sign of bandits.

The drop zone for water cabs was our first hint something was amiss. Literally, it was a drop zone. The attendants—smiling and waving their arms in the manner that makes the Italian language so enchanting—guided us to the departure area, tossed our bags into the hands of the crew, and signaled for us to get in. Next stop Venice.

There was one problem. The drop was eight feet. There were no stairs or ladders, just lots of air separating us from the deck. It was, as you might guess, the kind of moment that gave us dry mouth.

We did it, grasping the walls, allowing our bodies to stretch as far down as possible, and finally dropping. Me first. I helped Mary, who stuck the landing, a couple of feet, no big deal. When we were both safe, we glanced at each other with knowing looks that said, "This isn’t right.”

Then we waited. Our boat captain explained that another family was arriving, which made me wonder what kind of monitoring system the garage used. After about 15 minutes, the couple and their kids arrived. They, too, stuck the landings, both Mary and me helping this time. The captain indicated we would go to their hotel first.

We drove across the harbor, breathtaking views of Venice, and exchanged pleasantries with the family. Like us, they were staying three days. Inside the city's canal system, a turn here and a turn there, the captain announced to our fellow passengers with the Cheshire cat smile, “We’re at your hotel.”

That’s when Mary kicked into action. She marched up to the front of the boat and stated, emphatic, resolved, 100 percent certain, “No we're not.”

Our captain pretended not to speak English. But he got the point. Mary gestured right, then left, and stabbed at her map of the canals with an insistent forefinger. He was cowed and, nodding his head with an expression that says "Yikes" in any language, started the boat again.

Mary tapped him on the shoulders when it was time to turn, her map and index finger always at the ready. After another twenty or so minutes, we arrived at the first hotel. The couple thanked us, packed up their kids, and disembarked. They told Mary, “Thank you. We would have been lost."

Then came our turn. The captain turned down one canal and proceeded to a dock, which looked like all the others. “We’re here.”

Mary folded her arms and shook her head, tapping her foot on the deck. The captain shrugged and started motoring again. He had this guilty look on his face, like he should have known better than to try a second time. Twenty minutes later we pulled up to our hotel.

Phew.

In retrospect, I think we charged right into the marauding band of pirates from the guidebook. They wanted a quick drop, a quick buck, and a quick getaway. I don't claim to have any special insights into pirates. But as pirates go, I suspect these guys were fairly agreeable. They just happened to meet their match that day, my wife, the human GPS, the modern equivalent of Red Chief in the famous hostage story from O'Henry.

HANK: Travel stories? Charleston? As we said, there are prizes in store, so let's hear 'em! Me? I just wanna meet the fabulous Mary!

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"When the money talks, I listen," says NORB VONNEGUT. He is the author of three financial thrillers including The Gods of Greenwich, which the NYT calls, "A gleeful peek at the world of hedge fund moguls." Stephen Frey says The Trust (available July 2012) "reels you in fast…then goes like lightning." Published in eight languages, Vonnegut has appeared on Bloomberg as well as the Dylan Ratigan, Judith Regan, and Laura Ingraham shows. Currently, he is working on his first non-fiction project—a true story about the American dream colliding with American justice.

Vonnegut brings a unique insider’s perspective to his writing. Before turning to color commentary on Wall Street, he built his wealth management career with Morgan Stanley, Paine Webber and other icons of finance. A Harvard College and Harvard Business School graduate, Norb splits his time between New York City and Rhode Island and is a Trustee for the American Foundation for the Blind. LIKE Norb Vonnegut Books on Facebook to learn more.