But what's with this map thing?
OK. You need an example.
It was a beautiful day in June as we drove through southwestern Utah headed, ostensibly, for Cedar Breaks National Monument. I was lounging in the back seat of Mark's Jeep reading the various books -- tourbooks, field guides, area natural history -- and nodding off periodically.
At some point I woke up, probably because Subrata and Mark were handing maps back and forth and discussing directions in a rather animated way. I leaned forward to look at one of the two maps being handed back and forth -- the one that wasn't currently in use, thank you. It was removed from me. I tried the other one. Again, I was rendered mapless. One more time I tried to look at a map and one more time I ended up without map.
Fine. I'm female. I'm unfortunately used to this sort of thing. This was only the second day of a full week of close togetherness. So, I dug into my book bag and pulled out the AAA Tour Book to see if there was any sort of map of the immediate area in it. There was! It was fairly small and lacking in detail, but it was a map of the immediate area.
It was clear to me -- my female opinion -- that we were "not on the correct track" to get to Cedar Breaks. We were near Cedar City, but we seemed to be headed into the suburbs.
We eventually got it straightened out -- they hadn't noticed that the slight jog in the road actually meant that they had take a quick jog over on a freeway to get onto a different road -- and made it to Cedar Breaks.
What I don't get is this: How can a sub-species (men) spend so much time reading, analyzing and generally fondling this thing that they put so much trust in that they won't ask or listen when they know they're on the wrong track, and still be that incompetent with the thing?
Of course, I suppose the same thing holds if you substitue "woman" for "map" ...