“Turn left in 1000 feet.”  “You have arrived at your destination.”

The typical saying that you hear coming out of a GPS.  Most people decide to use these handy devices on their vacations to get them to where they need to go.

But not with my family.

My father is your typical man. He wants to use a map and navigate the old fashioned way.

On a recent vacation to New York City my father bought us all the maps and books needed to tour the Big Apple, and decided to be our own personal family GPS.

During our third day in the city we took a subway downtown to do some shopping when it started to pour rain. My brother and I ran to the nearest awning to take shelter while my mother and father looked at the map to find our way to a subway station.

After several minutes of arguing and looking at the map, (upside down for the majority of the time), we headed off to the subway.

Once we had been walking around, lost, for what seemed like the entire day, I said to my dad, “Isn’t that Chinatown up there?”

“Oh no! It’s that way. (Pointing behind him).”

As we continued walking I saw signs that looked like they were written in Chinese and I asked my dad again if we were in Chinatown. Once again, he looked at his map and finally admitted that we were lost. We all stopped to look and see where he could have possibly gone wrong!

We decided to continue walking to Chinatown and catch a subway there. When we were walking my mom and dad made my brother and I cross the street very quickly. It wasn’t until later that I found out that we were going to walk right in the middle of Skid Row.

When we finally got to Chinatown, we walked around again for quite some time looking for the subway. My father being the man that he is wouldn’t ask for directions so finally my mom stopped to buy us something to eat and asked where the subway was. The man told us at the food stand it was right there, and pointed not even a hundred yards away.

After the endeavor of my father making my family walk around for hours looking for a subway he earned the nickname “Geeps”, and of course we bought him a GPS when we got home. The most surprising part of this vacation, we didn’t even get to eat any Chinese food!