GPS, maps, and navigation skills

I'm a whiz at navigation; navigation is one of the few things at which I am probably uncannily good. In Army officer basic, I was the first in my company at land nav (they drop you off out there in "the woods" and you have to make your way through a series of check points. When I go my helicopter and airplane pilots licenses, I could just look at a map and navigate from point A to point B.

One ability that has served me well is taking the rental car company maps and getting to where I needed to go efficiently in a new city. Something I have had to do very frequently. Navigating city streets and subway systems (even in Japan) has always been simple for me.

It just got simpler. A few months ago, I bought a Tomtom GPS. I was in Whistler, British Columbia last week and had to drive to Seattle. When I got ready to leave Whistler, I popped it on the dash, entered the street address in Seattle that I wanted to go to and it calculated a map directly there. AND, it managed to navigate its way through Vancouver, bless its' fuzzy little circuit board.

While I am quite impressed with the technology (it did a few things that were not spot on, but it was nonetheless pretty accurage), I wonder if my land nav skills are going to go the way of my handwriting skills (don't EVER ask me to write something down for you now, I have to type it!)