Geocoding and reverse geocoding with Location [#1305496]

I have a site that uses geocoding and then reverse geocoding to turn an "informal" place name (e.g."North Beach") into an "official" address (e.g. "San Francisco, CA, 94115"). Users enter a place name into a form, hit "Send," and then we use geocoding to get the lat and lon, and then use the lat and lon to get the address. (We have our reasons for doing this.)

Here are the pertinent calls:

geocoder.geocode( { 'address': address}, function(results, status)

and

geocoder.geocode({'latLng': latlng}, function(results, status)

This is all done with JavaScript using Google's JavaScript API v3, which we are loading into the <head> tag on every page. We would prefer to call functions that sit in a module. Also, we are using Gmap to load maps onto some pages, and on those pages, our "address cleaner" widget does not work - presumably because of a conflict with the Location module, possibly multiple instances of the geocoder object.

We would like our "address cleaner" widget to use the Location module to do our geocoding and reverse geocoding. Is this possible? If so, how? Note: my experience with php and the guts of Drupal modules is limited, so please take that into account when replying.