Today's topic is Lucille. For those who haven't met her yet, Lucy is the mostly amazing person who lives in the microprocessor of my motorcycle's GPS. How she manages to keep all that information in her memory and maintain complete situational awareness is amazing. But, yes there is a but, every now and then for reasons unbeknown to mere mortals and bike riders (I suspect sunspots, or microbursts of wattage to her CPU, something akin to a hot flash I understand), she looses it. By it, I mean the where she happens to be at that precise moment. She behaves like I'm the one that's lost. Surely operator error is out of the question - I was just following orders. She recalculates and she directs me through a series of ever more confusing turns. Why plotting out the course she insists upon on a piece of paper would look like a half eaten plate of pasta (linguini). In those cases I've discovered that it's best to take matters into ones own hands; to discharge her of guidance responsibilities and give her time to recover her bearings.
So, when this happened in Knoxville today, I gently turned her off, drove into a McDonalds, ordered a smoothie and as I slowly sipped it reprogrammed the GPS while Lucy was collecting her thoughts. When it was time to leave I put the GPS on the bike, selected the destination and waited to see what she'd say. "Please proceed to the highlighted route". The tone was authoritative and polite, and I took the "please" and the absence of any expletives as positive signs. And I was right; Lucy guided me faultlessly out of Knoxville and on to Middlesboro where the room I had booked at the aforementioned McDonalds awaited. Lucy is actually quite good and since we spend so much time together I can't help wondering what she looks like and what she wears. Do you think it's a tailored skirt and fetching blouse with a Hermès scarf like Claudine the french GPS girl wears, or something more casual that's more practical for long trips?
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