I travel a lot. Way more than I want to.  My trips are all about meetings with buyers from different stores or conferences or meetings with people to help grow Good Clean Love. Ostensibly, I want to do all those things, but the going and coming is exhausting and un-nerving. After multiple boardings and de-boardings I usually find myself in a rental car driving through cities I have never been to, and even sometimes across state lines I have never crossed.  I can’t say how happy I am on these days to have the company of the Google Maps girl. As far as I am concerned this is the biggest triumph of the digital age.

I never feel lost with the Google Maps girl. I feel like I have a friend. I don’t know how many Google geniuses were involved to create a program that is at once so accurate, so available and so friendly, but it is a deep blessing that I don’t want to just take for granted.  See, I remember how hard it used to be to get from point A to point B, even just a few years ago when Map Quest was as good as it could get.

Map Quest directions weren’t nearly as reliable and they weren’t embodied in a voice that feels like someone sitting next to you in the car. I love how the Google Maps girl reassuringly even says things like “Take the left fork” and then as I get close, repeats again “Stay left.” It is a little scary for me to admit, given my overall feelings that technology has exceeded our capacity in humanity, but the Google Maps girl is the exception, she feels like a friend. And frankly, if the robots that are supposed to take over are as reliable and kind as she is, they may have something on humanity.

So please take this deep thanks – all you brilliant Google map engineers, because no matter where I am, your Maps girl knows where to go. Sometimes, as I am driving down long empty highways, waiting for her to tell me when to turn, I wonder how it could be possible for the Google Maps girl to show up for everyone, every where at the same time-  And then I wonder if that is possible- why are so many people still hungry.

I bet if we give those Google engineers a little more time,  maybe they will figure out a way to solve world hunger. And no doubt the food will be delivered to the far corners of the world with the help of the Google Maps girl.