Saturday, June 05, 2010

GPiSsed

Well, using the GPS to get from there to here didn't work too well.

My first clue that this might not be a seamless activity was when we backed out of the driveway, using the GPS's Favorites item titled Home to Cousins House, and the GPS said, cheerily Now arriving at destination Home. Um.... So we programmed in the address, and it was good....right up to the point where it wanted us to go straight and we wanted to take a different route. Well, okay, fine. But then it started doing its Recalculating bit, and next thing we knew, it was pointing toward Staten Island (which was good; that was the way we wanted to go).

And past it, pointing now to the Holland Tunnel. And then the Lincoln Tunnel. And then the George Washington Bridge. By that time, we figured out that it had wanted to drive us through downtown Manhattan -- which is the most direct route to get to the Long Island Expressway from New Jersey. But, okay, I knew where we were going, and though I don't like driving on the Cross Bronx Expressway, I can do it. And then the bridge over to Queens, okay, thats good. And then the Cross Island Parkway. And then get off the CIP and go onto a city street. And one block later get on the CIP and go south. And then Get off and go on Northern Boulevard (which is a majorly congested city street). And then awk! As we turned it off, looked at the map, and found out how to get where we wanted to go.

I think GPS is good, I really do. But perhaps, in cities, not so much.

3 comments:

genderist said...

The Hater uses ours when he has to travel for work. It took him some getting used to, but he likes it now.

Tabor said...

Our GPS always tries to run us through the cities!!

Cerulean Bill said...

I realized that I had no idea what it considered a decent route to be, and there is no way to say 'show me, let me modify it'. Hmmmm....