09/09/2026
When I was young, the skill of navigation was an important one. I learned at a young age how to read a map, to plan more than one path to my destination and, when possible, to have a navigator in the passenger seat to assist with staying on course and to do course corrections when road construction or closed streets made the original plan obsolete.
I was there when GPS made its debut in the form of expensive Garmin devices. For us poors, there was MapQuest. The sound of my old dot matrix printer, spewing 27 pages of directions for a trip was as much pain in the ass as exciting new toy. Seriously, I did not need step by step directions to get from my house to the interstate but there was no way to truncate those directions.
The current giants of electronic navigation are Google maps and Waze. Both can be very helpful while still being annoying as hell. They continue to insist on providing detailed directions starting at your door (like really, who has trouble getting out of their own neighborhood). And, at least for google maps, the friendly voice insists on repeating directions for things like exits at least 10 times, usually starting a few miles before it is really needed. Generally though, I am able to set and forget once I have selected a route.
Not on my drive from Cave City, KY to home in Wisconsin.
I very deliberately selected a path that completely avoided I65 and Indianapolis. Day or night, summer or winter - the path of I65 through Indy is a fu***ng nightmare. Second only to the unholy portal to hell that is the 90/94 path from Hammond to Chicago. Don’t even consider the Skyway bypass where they extort a $20 toll and still don’t save you much time. Google maps appeared to accept my direction and we headed off with a light heart.
Less than 10 miles into the journey, I find myself directed to the on ramp for I65 north. I stop, check the route and see that the one I selected is not the one that was presented to me. Rather than waste time back tracking, I decide to just take I65 to Louisville and divert shortly after.
About halfway to Louisville, I have my offspring play around with the map app to find a route that just avoids major cities. It gets programmed in and off we go into the wonderland of State Highways, County Roads and sometimes residential streets that is the none interstate route. Not even 5 minutes later, the cheery google voice announces that it has found a faster route that would save me 45 minutes. I do not opt to select that route. I was aware of it and had deliberately avoided it. Google maps decides we are going that way anyway.
WTF!?!
I have my juvenile navigation aide stop the app, reselect the desired route and start it again. Several minutes later the same cheery voice makes the same damn declaration. I again do not opt in. The directions change anyway. Repeat two more times.
Now, it has become a conspiracy. I pull over and look at the app myself. Avoid tolls - check! Avoid interstates - check! Route selected that brings me near Terra Haute - check! I drive 20 miles then check the app. I am again seeing directions that will send me to I65 and Indianapolis. This is no longer funny.
I pull over again and pull up the general map of the area surrounding me and chart a path the old fashioned way. It was a mostly straight shot north and west designed to get us far enough west that the map app would stop considering I65 a good alternative. We get to Owensboro and I again attempt to get the app to accept a route north that does not include I65. No joy.
I then proceed to experiment. First Chicago is entered as the destination, then Champaign, and finally Terra Haute resulted in a route that did not swing me back to I65 and Indianapolis. I didn’t actually trust the app until we crossed into Illinois.
I do not know what electronic demon was demanding my presence in Indianapolis but I think I will use an old fashioned paper map the next time I go through Indiana.
