GPS shenanigans...

[alexpgp]

Galina and I made jet lag work for us by allowing ourselves to go to sleep early on Sunday night and getting up at 1 am Mountain Time yesterday. We spent a couple of hours packing, and then got on the road at 3:20 am Mountain Time. (As it turns out, we left some fairly important items in Houston. File that under "lessons learned.")

The last couple of times I drove to Houston from here, I took what I call the "Southern Route," driving west on I-10 to Ft. Stockton, then up Highway 285 to Clines Corners, New Mexico. I particularly like the rather long stretch of Interstate between Ft. Stockton and roughly Kerrville where the posted speed limit is 80 mph.

Our Garmin GPS, on the other hand, wanted to route us via what I call the "Northern Route," up I-45 to Dallas-Ft. Worth, then diagonally over to Amarillo on Highway 287, where we'd pick up I-40 to Clines Corners. From Clines Corners, all routes home basically follow Highway 285 north to where Highway 84 splits off and ends just at the Pagosa Springs city limit.

I haven't figured out how to turn off the incessant jabbering from the GPS after it recalculates the road home, because it annoyingly keeps trying to turn you around to go where its poor little computer brain wants you to. (I'm sure it's not hard to figure out; it's merely a matter of priorities.) Eventually, however, the unit seems content to let us drive west on I-10, but then started jabbering again once we got to exit 523, whereupon it directed us down a series of small country roads that bring us to... the westbound I-10 on-ramp at exit 520!

Galina and I had a good laugh about that, let me tell you!

We finally decided to go with the GPS's suggestion to take exit 456 and drive north on Highway 83 to Eden, then west and north on Highway 87 to Lamesa, and then west on Highway 380 to Roswell, New Mexico. Once in Roswell, a right turn on Highway 285 pointed us home, as described above.

We pulled into town at shortly before 8:30 pm MT. As we passed the Malt Shoppe at the south end of town, we spied a huge crowd of spectators clustered along the opposite side of the road. They were looking at a small bear, possibly a cub, who had wandered into the grassy area that adjoins the Piedra River and was not doing much of anything except ignoring the crowd, which stood about 50 feet away. If it was a cub, then hopefully mama bear didn't show up suddenly and decide to discipline the crowd. There'd be a lot of knees and elbows suddenly, don't you know.

Man, but it feels good to be home!

Cheers...

Comments

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

When O and I went to Eugene, Oregon a few weeks ago we rented a car. It came with a gps. At first (like for 30 seconds) that seemed totally unnecessary. But as soon as you drive out of the airport parking garage, you realize that you have no sense of direction at all, since you didn't drive yourself there. The gps ended up being essential. But it yammered at us a lot until we figured out that all we had to do was turn off the volume so we could ignore it. (This was after we got on the highway and knew where we were going.)However, later, O decided that neither I, on the map, nor the gps didn't know what we were talking about and kept ignoring both of us as we returned to town. Big mistake. What did end up being highly useful was Tobin's i phone. He found us a great, inexpensive restaurant and pointed us in the direction of the airport.