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The new Lady in our lives

I’ve fallen in love. Well, let’s not rush in to things.
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I’ve fallen in love.

Well, let’s not rush in to things. That may be an exaggeration, a rush of gratitude from a jaded old fart who imagined such things as whirlwind romances were relics of a personal past strewn with vaguely remembered — mostly forgotten — faces and names come and long gone.

Love had settled into my life like a comfortable cocoon. I’ve loved my Perfect Partner for over two decades… exclusively, deeply and fully. I’ve loved Whistler life as I’ve loved no place else and as a result have now lived here longer than I’ve ever lived any place in what I always imagined was a rootless life. I love how the summer at Smilin’ Dog Manor follows ski season, a change of place and scene, speed and tempo that makes returning to Whistler each autumn an exciting prelude to the coming snow. I love Zippy the Dog as only a dogdaddy can love an aloof, totally self-absorbed, four-legged, couch-sleepin’ oaf.

But shortly before Christmas another lady came into my life. At first, I was pretty indifferent to her. She seemed cold and, well, way too sophisticated for me, which may be a pretty good example of damning with faint praise since almost everyone I meet leaves me in the dust sophisticationwise. She was bright, intelligent in a way I’ll never be. She knew more about her particular field of expertise than anyone I’ve ever met. Her knowledge of geography seemed encyclopedic, an admittedly esoteric field but one of profound importance once you get past your own mind-numbing experience with it, warped as it generally is in an indifferent grade school geography teacher.

And, she was infinitely patient. Anyone who knows me can immediately grasp how important a trait that is in anyone who’s going to deal with me for longer than it takes to drink a beer and be insulted a few times in the process. When I ignore her advice, suggestions, recommendations, she doesn’t get mad, doesn’t feel slighted, doesn’t clam up. Instead, she goes with the flow, adjusts her gameplan, comes right back with another extremely rational proposal. Almost without exception, I realize she’s right and wind up doing things her way.

Her name’s Maestro, a bizarre moniker if there ever was one so I just call her the Lady. My Perfect Partner has more or less fallen for her as well. She’s slipped into our lives in a comfortable ménage a trois completely devoid of jealousy, bickering or hurt feelings. She’s a GPS navigation system, the progeny of the Magellan clan, and in a just over a week, she’s gone from stranger to someone I rarely leave home without.

On the Luddite-Technophile scale I haven’t wandered too far right of Ludditeville. Though I was an early adopter of personal computers, I feel about them much the same way I feel about screwdrivers… the right tool for the job and way more flexible than even their creators ever imagined.

But aside from computers, most of the electronics in my life have been hand-me-downs. There’s a mishmash of ancient stereo equipment laying around the house, a rudimentary DVD player visited mostly by discs borrowed from the library, a television made shortly after analog tuners became obsolete and a digital camera way smarter than I am.

No iAnything, no cellphone, no Crackberry, no gaming device, no programmable refrigerator. While there are no blinking 12:00 displays laying around, it’s a household that would not seem unfamiliar to someone just coming out of a two-decade suspended animation sleep.

But now, there’s a GPS. I’m sure GPS technology is well-understood by everyone who’s read this far. A necklace of satellites in geosynchronous orbit around Earth keep track of each and every one of us for Homeland Security. GPS is an acronym for Guy Phace Saver as it turns out, since it finally relieves us of having to wander the earth aimlessly while we steadfastly insist we are neither lost nor need to stop and ask for directions.

I’ve used GPS systems on water and been grateful for the fact I didn’t have to learn how to use a sextant instead. I’ve become annoyed with a friend who brought a GPS with us on a canoe trip to the Bowron Lakes, an act not entirely unlike leaving a trail of breadcrumbs between your easy chair and the refrigerator.

But I’d never even seen one in a car before I took the Lady for a ride to a friend’s house in the nether regions of Albuquerque. I’d gotten lost finding his house before and was certain I might again, having not been there for several years. Admittedly, the route was a bit more circuitous than it needed to be — She didn’t know the old cut-through-the-parking-lot trick — but I got there without wishing I had a cellphone to call for emergency directions.

And since then, Lady’s proven invaluable. It took about 10 minutes to figure out her menus. Another 10 scanning the instruction “book” on CD revealed her innermost secrets, which are nothing short of mindblowing. Punch an address in, or even an intersection, and she becomes a bloodhound on scent. “Perform a legal U-Turn at the first opportunity,” she says. Okay, nobody’s perfect. I’d rather just back out of the garage.

Gently she guides me. “Turn left in 100 metres. Approaching freeway entrance on the right. Stay in the right lane. Your other right.”

When I ignore her directions, which I’ve done intentionally, inadvertently and at least a few times because I have this right-left dyslexic thing happening in my brain, she doesn’t get mad, doesn’t raise her voice, doesn’t throw a snit and turn herself off. “Calculating route,” she says even-temperedly, avoiding even the accusatory, more accurate recalculating route option.

Now, I know how to read a map, use a compass and plot a course. But I’ve also set out on cross-country journeys without a map in the car, comfortable, if only temporarily, knowing only my destination lay east of my position.

But my new Lady knows all. She will do more than guide me to an ultimate destination. She’ll tell me about upcoming gas stations, restaurants, hotels, other points of interest — including ski areas large and small — and, well, pretty much everything in every AAA tripbook in print.

Aside from Favourite addresses and one-time destinations, she can easily keep a daisy chain of objectives in her head. It took about 10 minutes to program every ski resort and hotel I’ll be visiting on the Colorado leg of the Ski la Vie tour into her prodigious memory.

Her voice softens when she announces, “Approaching destination,” and becomes downright warm when, generally at the foot of a friend’s driveway, she coos, “You have arrived.”

Yes, I think I have.

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