Garmin may be a top bloke, but he’s got some dodgy mates.
One of the joys of working in a new city as a messenger was finding my way around with a map. The power of the map was indisputable. It could tell me where I was and how to get to where I needed to be, and the less I used it, the more I felt at home.
Now the GPS, I’m not so sure of, and here’s a lesson well learnt in the need to have a map.. While working the Tour of Wellington with the AIS/Jayco squad, I hooked up with some local soignies to follow them out to the feed zone. The man in the lead headed us up the motorway and before long turned us off onto a gravel road. At this point I wondered why the hell we were off the main road, but I figured local knowledge was in force.
Now don’t get me wrong, the back roads were fun to drive on, with great scenery and the scent of the undiscovered. I just didn’t have the time for a tourist jaunt. We were held up by a farmer driving his flock of sheep down the road, and also saw a horse trotting along the road whose best mate was a goat.
The lead driver turned off onto a smaller road and the guy in front of me pulled up. I jumped out to see what was up. “I think his Garmin might be f$&ked, we don’t want to head down that road”. Turns out he had been following on the map he had and was pretty bemused about the course we were taking.
With a different driver in lead we hit tarmac again in no time and seemed to be back on track to get to the feed zone on time. Lucky too, because I had no idea what excuse I could come up with to explain to the DS how I had managed to not be at the feed zone. As we were waiting for the peloton to arrive, Comm 2 was ahead of the riders and yelled out at the window at us. “No feeding, you can’t feed today, no feeding”. We had to laugh, and considering this was contrary to what we had discussed with the race director that morning, we ignored him.
You gotta keep on your toes, and always have a map handy.