Modern Tech

When I started out on the Travel Film road less than a decade ago, we used a big 
Rand-McNally Atlas to find our way, and when we needed to phone somebody, we 
looked for a pay phone booth. Sometimes I make diary-like notations in various 
notebooks that we have lying around, and this morning, I ran across the 
following entry from last Fall. You probably have to be of a certain age to 
appreciate this.

"We're driving north on I-75 in Ohio, a sunny day, when our cell phone indicates 
there's a Text message. It's from my brother in Australia asking me about my 
bank's routing number. He says I can e-mail him back. Our GPS indicates there's 
a Panera Bread (Cafe) at the next exit, so we leave the interstate and pull up 
beside Panera. I get my lap top out and go online using Panera's free Wi-Fi. I 
e-mail my brother the information he wants and simultaneously download an e-mail 
from our daughter in Louisiana. (She's dog-sitting for us.) The e-mail is a 
photograph of our dog, Jake, taken with, and sent from, her i-Phone. Jake is 
blissfully asleep on her couch. He's obviously stressed that we abandoned him. 
"We get back on the interstate and follow the instructions of our GPS which 
leads us to an address in Bowling Green we'd never been to before. Marsha says, 
'Beam me up, Scotty.'" 

Of course it would have been simpler if we'd had our own i-Phone.