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I sometimes have difficulty knowing whether describing the end of a journey should be classed as an epilogue, or a eulogy. Both signal an end of a sort: both are recapitulations, although of different significance, perhaps; and yet both are kind of schadenfreudish as well, don’t you think…? I mean we cannot repeat the past- good or bad, sad or happy- nor should we want to: what was lives there; was is -or even just was- does not. They are different worlds; they produce different memories, different emotions… they are not like watching the same movie over and over again…

I have been to New Zealand perhaps 15 or 20 times -all stemming from my fascination with it on the 2 or 3 times I once worked there. After that, I simply couldn’t keep away. And although I tend to retrace my steps (sorry, my drives) each time, they are inevitably different. Maybe Age is one reason: I can no longer hike the steep hills on the trails along the way now; I am unable to sample the surf on my boogey-board in odd and large-waved spots along the coast; and I certainly no longer yearn to paraglide there as I have on occasions with my friends. But I am still drawn to travel the well-trodden (okay -well driven) routes that I seem to repeat time and time again, and am as thrilled at seeing them anew as I have always been.

This time was different, though. I was determined that rather than paying expensive roaming fees on my Canadian phone, I would travel as usual, but leave the Airplane-Mode ON and, as I have mentioned in a previous essay, rely solely on the WiFi I plug into in my various lodgings. You can do pretty well anything with that source, as long as you don’t stray far from the premises -even out to the street where you parked; you just have to plan ahead, eh? Punch the route you want to take onto the phone while you’re still in your room, and don’t mess with it after that.

I find that phones -even the modern ones- like to be mollycoddled, though: cuddling up to a WiFi is sort of like holding hands for them, or something. They get anxious when the hand is released. Mine, for example hates it when I don’t follow the instructions it has set out for me. The first time I tried that, it acted like a sulking child and simply would not allow me to reconnect to the route it had planned for me.

Then, as if the phone were maturing from day to day, there was a ‘Recalculating’ phase where it pretended it was really trying to cooperate, but took its time figuring out a different route. It did that when I was just outside of Christchurch (I always get lost there, even though I always seem to book a motel on Bealey Avenue). It had instructed me to ‘take the ramp’ clearly using the NZ word for something not even resembling its Canadian counterpart. I had to wander around unfamiliar roads, and highways for nearly an hour before my own muscle memory -or is it neural memory?- kicked in. I’m not sure what the phone uses.

Then, in its next incarnation, it took umbrage at me for asserting my independence, and began removing the map altogether, but surfacing eerily as a disembodied voice issuing instructions on a blank screen on a phone now dumped onto the cluttered car seat beside me. Of course, I am no dummy, so, fearing a repeat of the naked, unmapped petulant voice, I acceded to its tetchiness and the next day it rewarded me by letting me watch my progress on its screen.

Unfortunately, I have done many of the routes so frequently, I know shortcuts the phone hadn’t even considered. It revealed its displeasure by showing me driving over unroaded fields on my way to a MacDonalds in Whakatane. I suppose it was a subtle attempt to prove to me that I needed it. No doubt beginning to be embarrassed by its puerile behaviour however, it soon backed down from that, but when I eventually made it to Mount Maunganui, via another shortcut it didn’t know about, and was trying to find a motel I’d never stayed at, it purposely screwed up the directions: a child stamping its feet, I suppose.

Still, like training a dog, and rewarding good behaviour I began to be aware of its peccadilloes as the trip progressed. To tell the truth, I didn’t really need the GPS except for one thing: I have always been -and continue to be- completely unable to find the car rental outlet at Auckland airport without human help. I use the same company every year, and although I pick up the car on the South Island in Christchurch, I leave it on the North Island in Auckland and so it’s only reasonable that I still get confused by the Medusa’s head of intertwining airport roads that seem to slither in every direction and then change their minds. Even when I have resorted to GPS instructions in the past, I still miss a sign, or head down the wrong exit ramp because of the demands to make rapid, unchangeable directional decisions in the rapidly moving traffic weaving in and out of the lanes at high speeds.

But on my last day, as a proof-of-concept, I was determined to pamper my phone as if it were my only child: I was determined to indulge it’s every instruction, even if it were to demand that I take the first exit on the next roundabout although I could clearly see there was only one to take; I’d also researched the concept of a NZ ramp so I would understand what it meant; and, of course, I did not touch the screen the entire trip from Mount Maunganui to Auckland. I left it to rest comfortably in its little windshield holder when I visited a MacDonalds along the way, but only chose one that did not take me off the route. I was the perfect doting parent, I think.

The little voice seemed pleased, and dare I say even proud, when, after a tricky last minute command to turn right now, I actually managed to follow instructions; and like a teenager who finally passed his driver’s test, it confidently announced that my destination was presently on my right after executing perhaps the most complex set of instructions it had ever been called upon to perform.

I think the phone matured on this trip, and you know what? I think I did, too: I enjoyed the game, although I’m no really sure who won. Still, I think I’m gonna pay the roaming fees next time…