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