[gps-talkusers] My GPS experiences on 2000 miles of Greyhound

Hi.  Lots of stuff to relate here, observations, questions, positives and 
negatives.  Comments are appreciated.  I'm using the Magellan 310 with the BN.
I traveled by bus from San Diego, to Eureka Ca, to Portland along the 
Oregon coast, to Coeur d'Alene Idaho, to Boise, and back to Portland.  The 
last three formed a triangle, so I could do some radio Dx-ing in Eastern 
Oregon and Western Idaho.

First, some general observations--  the batteries don't last anywhere near 
fifteen hours, more like six or seven.  Next, I would often get error 
messages such as, "unable to initialize map engine", or "unable to load 
maps folder", and simply reissuing the command to start GPS worked fine.  I 
would often look for a city by entering lettersign-c for the city name, and 
get a list of cities.  My desired city wasn't there.  Sometimes, entering 
the same c at the same prompt would bring up a different list of cities 
beginning with that letter.  A few cities could never be found, although 
they appeared loud and clear when I was actually at that GPS location.  A 
good example is Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  Enterprise, Oregon also didn't exist.


Generally, however, I was very satisfied with the GPS system.  It gave me 
real independence, and a true awareness of surroundings which a sighted 
driver can't possibly provide.  Among the most fun experiences was 
constantly checking the heading and altitude while going over the Grapevine 
on I5 in California, and traversing the many switchbacks and hairpins in 
the mountains between Lewiston and Boise, Idaho. I never really appreciated 
the steepness of those grades before.  It was fun to ask the bus driver if 
81 mph wasn't a bit fast?  I helped a new female driver out of some jams 
between Arcata Ca and Lincoln City, Or.

Lots of roads and cities have really strange names, like Pacheco Pass 
Highway, Mountain Road, etc.  Lots of places in the middle of nowhere, no 
town within 30 miles, still had the name of the nearest town, followed by 
Township.  Even the middle of the Grapevine had a township and a 
zipcode.  It was also nice to know how far it was (as the crow flies) 
between my current position and a future virtual position, without the need 
to create a route.  In order to find out how far I was from Spokane, for 
example, I just set an address to a street beginning with the letter a, and 
an address of 0, because I didn't know the name of an actual street in 
Spokane.  Question-- is there a way to calculate the distance between two 
points, when neither is my actual GPS position? e.g. the equivalent of 
pressing i to find the distance between current GPS and virtual 
positions?  How far is it from an arbitrary street in Spokane and another 
street in Portland, Oregon?

Once, I was preparing to create a route to a user.poi-- to find my way, 
walking to a particular restaurant.  Fortunately, it took the software a 
long time to create the route, as a woman with a very exciting voice came 
along, going to the same place.  Some things are better than independence!

All in all, I learned a whole lot of geography, much of which I would have 
missed if relying on a sighted driver.  However, if you plan to do the 
mountain roads in Idaho, either take some dramamine, or waterproof the 
BrailleNote!

Aloha,
Doug Martin

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