I flew into Newark airport to go to a conference hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. Newark is in New Jersey, and to get to Long Island, I had to cross New York City with my rental car. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any satellite navigation and no phone, which meant that I had to navigate the old-fashioned way.
The previous evening, my daughter had found a bug in our back yard. She was curious what kind of bug it was, so I used an app on my phone to find out. Eager to take a look, she reached for my phone, which dropped and hit a rock. This jammed the power button in the off position, and no amount of prodding could unjam it. My phone was gone.
The next morning, I went to the airport and flew to Newark. Standing in line for my rental car I intensely hoped that it’d have satellite navigation, but it didn’t. I connected my laptop to the airport Wifi, loaded the map of New York, tried to memorize the highways and exits I needed to take, and put the laptop into the passenger seat. Then I started driving. I got lost almost immediately.
Driving thorough some rundown part of Southern Brooklyn, I saw a cell phone repair store. I parked and went in. They took my phone to the back and operated on it for an hour. Eventually, they emerged and shook their heads somberly. They had not been able to revive it. They handed me its remains in a box resembling a small coffin.
I kept driving. It took me three hours to get to Colf Spring Harbor, but I eventually made it. By then, it was dark and most restaurants were closed. I found a Brazilian place that served all-you-can-eat meat, where I stayed until they closed, eating more meat than I had before or since, washing it down with beer.
A few days later, after the conference had ended, I visited Teddy Roosevelt’s home at Sagamore Hill. There were hardly any other visitors. I followed a trail down from this home to the beach, where I sat down to think for a while. Navigating New York with any digital help had been painful, and the only reason I attempted it at all was that I knew I was able to: I had done it before. When I learned to drive, turn-by-turn navigation wasn’t widely available yet, so I had to learn to navigate the old-fashioned way.
Nehaveigur 