Top-notch!

While I hadn’t put together the big picture so elegantly, I noticed immediately when I started using phone maps that they dramatically decreased my sense of geographic awareness.

Now I use a phone completely differently. I plan my route a long way ahead, study it even, look for landmarks, and then I put my phone away. It helps a lot that I’m now on a bike and have a negative incentive to pull the device out.

It’s been fantastic. I can actually visualize chunks of the new city I live in and associate it with a map quite clearly.