This is a true story.  Okay, all of my posts are true, but this one is particularly important to me because this was a real life use of the Origami where I did not set out to “try” anything in particular.  

It’s Saturday, about 10 am, and I am in the mountains somewhere in the middle of Corsica.  I had left my hotel at about 8 and was heading for the coast.  I’m on a road trip, and if you can believe this, I don’t actually have a map.  Up until this point I had been using a Lonely Planet guide to navigate as I would look up and read about cool places and then drive towards them using the rough sketches in the book or road signs.  All of a sudden this system failed me.  I approached an intersection and none of the town names it showed me were a) where I wanted to go or b) names I could even find in the book.  So I made a decision based completely on the pavement/road quality and headed off hoping for the best.  I did not feel great about this and after a dozen switchbacks I started to doubt my decision and worry that I was off course.  

All of a sudden however, I remembered that I had the UMPC in the bag beside me and it was loaded with Microsoft Auto Route.  Could these single lane roads in the middle of nowhere actually be on the map?  After a few clicks with my finger and a lot of zooming – oh my goodness they were!  I could easily see where I had come from, locate the crazy intersection with the useless signs and determine that I was on route.  This was a huge time (and stress) saver.  And now that I had the application open, I was even able to create a route to find the fastest way to my destination.  

This was awesome, and I felt pretty good about not spending those 5 euros on a map after all. :)