Blame It On Sunspots
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: Ravenna, Italy. We’re here to see the late-Roman/Byzantine mosaics (and Dante’s tomb) that the city is famous for. At least, that’s what I’m here for. I think Lee is planning to find a laundromat while I go to UNESCO monuments. We call it: divide and conquer.
Blame it on Sunspots
Lee will tell you that I have some peculiar interests. I prefer to think of them as esoteric. At the moment, I’m mildly obsessed with solar flares. Our sun is moving into a cycle of increased activity, which can have two interesting impacts: solar flares increase aurora activity (the northern lights), and sometimes they can impact digital infrastructure.
Digital infrastructure matters to us, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to pay attention to potential glitches (and yes, I pay attention to when Mercury is in retrograde, as well—feel free to judge). We are, for instance, completely dependent on digital banking, which is sometimes incredibly frustrating, depending on how convoluted the systems are of any given bank. If the banks were to go down completely, I suppose we’d be reduced to bartering, or perhaps theft. There’s always a goat or a chicken running around somewhere.
Even the basic, quotidian business of talking to our kids on the phone can be incredibly frustrating, or a miracle, depending on the day and the country. Are sunspots a believable excuse? I can’t hear you—the sun is acting up again.
Then there’s the complete idiocy of my health insurance company, which for some reason won’t let me log in from outside of the US, even though I have global coverage. I’m not sure how anyone functions without a VPN.
The most immediate, right-now-in-your-face technological challenge we face, though, is digital navigation. This life would be impossible if we didn’t have this amazing map of the entire globe in our hands at all times. Step-by-step directions, y’all—this is truly a miracle. And it works almost anywhere in the world—as long as the satellites keep working their magic.
If I go out for a walk, there’s pretty much zero chance I’ll be able to find my way back without my phone. Just to be on the safe side, I have an offline map loaded onto my phone. If I have the presence of mind to keep it up-to-date (downloading each country when we arrive), it’s a good backup; if we get lost somewhere and have no signal, I can use the backup map. Unfortunately, I’m rarely that organized, and I don’t have it when I need it.
Some people—like my spouse—are really good at absorbing and understanding how to navigate a new city or place. My brain just doesn’t work that way. (That’s okay—I’m good at other things. Team work makes the dream work, right?)
Occasionally, though, we wind up in unexpected places. It turns out even Google sometimes misjudges a route. [A verbatim quote from my spouse: Google knows more than you do—just do what it says.] In my defense, sometimes it’s clearly Google that’s leading us astray, not me. A few weeks ago, we decided to go for a long walk that would hopefully finish up at the place we wanted to have lunch. For the record, Lee was the one who was mapping our route that day, not me.
About halfway there, we found ourselves battling through the Saturday morning scrum at a used clothing market. In Tunisia, which is definitely in Africa. It was probably the biggest crowd we’ve been in since the pandemic began. I was trying to defend my ankle, which is not easy when you can’t see the ground. And you’re walking on cobblestones. And trying to keep up with Lee, who automatically speeds up whenever he’s in a crowd. Gee thanks, Google. That was not how I had planned to enjoy our leisurely stroll.
In Jordan once, Google took us down a stairway—a sort of back alley, but literally stairs—that cut through someone’s outdoor kitchen. An elderly couple were sitting there having breakfast. We nodded and said hello, and kept going.
Another time our route cut through a driving range; we didn’t realize it till we looked up and saw the net overhead. Oops.
Once I was out for a walk by myself and turned down a short alley, trying to get to the canal walkway I knew was right there, only to be greeted by a group of young men at the end of the block, gesturing at me to go back. I don’t know why they didn’t want me going that way, but I decided to quell my curiosity and go back the way I had come, post-haste.
More times than I can count, we’ve found ourselves unexpectedly walking up a highway entrance ramp, or trying to figure out how to cross twelve lanes of high-speed traffic. Lee says if we don’t see razor wire, it’s not a true Rosen walk.
If we’ve rented a car, navigation becomes an even bigger issue, because there’s so much potential for—mm, let’s call it marital friction. [More verbatim: “Why are you so bad at this?”]
We’ve driven on more pedestrian-only streets than I can remember. Once we drove smack into the middle of a soccer game. Another particularly memorable time, we drove into the middle of a street market, and had to just keep going in order to get out. Just yesterday, actually, in the span of two hours, we drove onto a sidewalk (it didn’t have a curb, so how were we to know?), exited by way of the crosswalk (yay for tiny cars!), and did a U-turn in the middle of one of those historic district permit-only zones that cost a fortune if you accidentally drive through. Lee is convinced we’ll be getting a hefty ticket in a few weeks. Luckily, he’s pretty sanguine about tickets at this point.
We’ve gotten halfway up steep, narrow roads and had to back down. We’ve pulled off the road, onto a track through a field, and said nope, never mind. More times than I can count, we’ve gotten trapped on a service road when we needed to be on the highway, or vice versa, and driven along looking longingly at where we meant to be.
We’ve done the European Vacation routine of going around and around the round-about, waiting for the map to recalculate and tell us which exit—Look kids, there’s Big Ben.
We have squabbled over which phone to use, who should hold it, how to hold it, how to spell the destination, whether to go right or left, forward or back, up or down. That’s particularly fun—when the choices are vertical, rather than horizontal—Google is really bad at that.
It’s all Google’s fault, yet we can’t live without it. Where would we be without The Google? I’ll tell you where we’d be: hopelessly lost.
If you need me, I’ll just be over here watching for sunspots.
From my writer’s notebook: The city of Ravenna was the western capital of the Byzantine Empire; its slow slide into obscurity began in the late 8th century, when it was defeated by Charlemagne. The grateful Pope, Adrian I, bestowed upon Charlemagne a great gift: permission to take anything he wanted from the once-glorious center of early Christianity. Charlemagne helped himself.
More than a thousand years later, during the Second World War, Allied troops entered Ravenna under signage reminding them of the penalty for looting.
Theft has always been a side-effect of war; as a matter of fact, when you zoom out to the thirty thousand foot view, isn’t it fundamentally the whole point of war?
Take care,
Lisa
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