A followup on my trip
posted in USA, Automobiles |I definitely didn’t get much of a chance to report back here from my road trip. As with all technical projects, it didn’t go perfectly. But the way they go…after a few 19 hour days…the project was pulled off successfully.
Following up on the GPS unit. Well, it helped, but it was never perfect. Sometimes it wanted me to go down a one way street (in downtown Pensacola!), and occasionally it wasn’t clear which turn I had to take. I realized at the end of the trip that by following the GPS I in no way have learned the locations I was driving. I followed directions and that did not allow me to figure out where things actually were. Further, because it didn’t use cardinal directions (north, west, east, south), but relied on ‘turn left’, ‘turn right’ instructions, I never even paid attention to what direction I was heading.
The absolute most useless part was using the built-in Yellow Pages. Since it was at least two years out of date, about half the things I wanted to go to (restaurants, hotels, etc.) were not listed. I once sat in the parking lot next door to a Wal-Mart in Foley Alabama and it told me the nearest Wal-Mart was about 220 miles away. Not counting the one next to me, there were at least 10 closer than that.
So, good and bad. I would get one in a rental car again, but I think I’ll turn it off occasionally to use some brainpower.
