GPS nightmare

[rivermouse]

This is a crazy story I want to share. Last week I went to the SC coast with the wife and one of her friends. On the second night her friend realized she needed a refill on a medication and the wife asked me to go get it. I didnt know the area and told her to give me some solid directions to the drug store chain she uses. Wife said no problem she would just program our new GPS to the store . BIG MISTAKE ..She programmed it while inside and I took it and plugged it into the car. I don't know what happened but it didn't send me to the drug store but to some golf course 12 miles south of where I needed to go. I tried to reprogram it using the address she gave me and headed north. Because it was bike week I was surrounded by dozens of loud harleys and then realized I couldnt even hear the GPS (wife for some reason had lowered the volume) The windows then started fogging up and because I was not use to driving her friends new car I didn't know how to turn on the defrost( a dangerious thing to do while running 60 mph in 3 lanes of traffic with loud motorcycles all around you) I quickly got lost again because I couldn't see out of the car well or hear the GPS and to make things worse the "low gas" light came on. It was then 10 minutes until the store would close so I just got some gas and went back to the beach condo.. I was very pissed off.....Needless to say the GPS was then put into a suitcase where the thing stayed until we got home....gez

 

[JB]

Re: GPS nightmare

Technology. When you really need it for more than reassurance Murphy's Law pops up.

 

[foodfisher]

Re: GPS nightmare

Yep, sometimes you have to go until you see the little red house with the frilly curtains, turn right till you cross the tracks, next left till you swing around the pond, right till....

 

[greenbush future]

Re: GPS nightmare

I still keep a map in my car, and use it all the time. Your situation was a bit different, but relying on technology has it's own set of drawbacks, and appear to have found a couple all in one night.

 

[rivermouse]

Re: GPS nightmare

I still keep a map in my car, and use it all the time. Your situation was a bit different, but relying on technology has it's own set of drawbacks, and appear to have found a couple all in one night.

I have learned to leave the GPS at home and tape the wifes mouth shut so she wont even try to give me directions.next time.I can find where I am just fine without them...The wife gave me the frikkin GPS for xmas too..gez I at one point would have liked to have stuffed the wife into the suitcase too but then I wouldn't have been able to post this ..

 

[dwco5051]

Re: GPS nightmare

About once a month or so I read an accident report in the paper where some truck driver was following their GPS and not looking out the upper part of the windshield and got stuck or damaged an underpass. It isn't like you have to interpolate the tide tables. When the sign says it is 10 feet it is that 24 hours a day.

 

[oregoncruiser]

Re: GPS nightmare

You gotta listen to the voices man!!! They were telling you to go golfing!! You blew it!!! Wife sends you to the golf course, you golf! What's the matter with you??

 

[jigngrub]

Re: GPS nightmare

Real men don't need a GPS or directions, we just drive around until we find what we're looking for!!!

I can navigate much better without a GPS than my wife can with one... and if you take her GPS away, she's lost in the Wal-mart parking lot.

 

[Home Cookin']

Re: GPS nightmare

my paper maps don't let me down.

 

[bassman284]

Re: GPS nightmare

Real men don't need a GPS or directions, we just drive around until we find what we're looking for!!!

Or find something else that's interesting.

 

[rivermouse]

Re: GPS nightmare

It was the perfect storm getting lost in heavy traffic trying to depend on a GPS that wasn't locked in to the place I was going. when I returned to the condo I asked my wife what was the difference between "NORTH OCEAN HIGHWAY SOUTH AND SOUTH OCEAN HIGHWAY NORTH"? she didn't know and the GPS doesn't either and I quit trying to figure it out. When we first arrived I was on a road I knew well but about one mile from my exit the wife and the GPS said NO the best way is to exit here and it will take you to the main highway, I followed her advice but then when we got to the main highway our neighbor who knew where the condo was but COULD NOT RECALL THE EXACT NAME AND ADDRESS OF IT then announced she had never come this way and was lost. It took us an additional 30 miles riding in circles until she recalled where she was....when we started to leave to go back home the GPS was locked away and I told both the wife and neighbor not to even think about giving me any directions.......It is not like I haven't been to the beach 100 times..

 

[matt167]

Re: GPS nightmare

Your supposed to get lost first. THEN turn the GPS on to find your way... The GPS I have has sent me the wrong way down 1 ways thru bad neighborhoods or tried to send me down roads that closed to traffic decades prior and were private roads. It's good that most of the time I know where I'm going or it's an area I can find my way.

 

[Home Cookin']

Re: GPS nightmare

Relying on GPS is like having a 90 year old as co-pilot.

In our neighborhood there is a "paper street" that is someone's lawn but shows up as a driveway to another house; pizza deliveries try to drive on it at night.

I heard a story about a family trying to go to the Pittsburgh zoo and ending up on a 45 minute drive to the top of a mountain where someone had a cabin or something called "the zoo."

Mapquest and similar services are just as bad; sometimes to take a direct route you have to schedule a stop in a small town along the way so it won't send you the long way around.

The biggest flaw is how they will confine you to an interstate when a secondary is fine or better, or put you on what seems to them to be a good alternative secondary road that is a nightmare. And it can't distinquish dangerous places, either; I guess someone might sue if they said something unkind about gang turf.

 

[stackz]

Re: GPS nightmare

um...why didnt you just roll the windows down in the car.

I dont know too many bikers that love riding around in rain so I can only assume it wasnt raining...

and yeah, bike week in myrtle beach sucks hugely lol.

I would have turned off the beach front strip and gotten on the main drag and pulled off into a souvenier shop to get the car/gps figured out.

 

[rivermouse]

Re: GPS nightmare

um...why didnt you just roll the windows down in the car.

I dont know too many bikers that love riding around in rain so I can only assume it wasnt raining...

and yeah, bike week in myrtle beach sucks hugely lol.

I would have turned off the beach front strip and gotten on the main drag and pulled off into a souvenier shop to get the car/gps figured out.

Rolling the windows down increased the biker noise and I could not then hear the GPS,,I did finally pull over when it was safe to try and reset the GPS but by then the store was about to close and I was running out of gas. As I said it was "the perfect storm"

 

[soggy_feet]

Re: GPS nightmare

I've been to Ocean City, MD twice, and it's been years. I can still probably give you directions around the sandbar.

Firm believer in knowing your route beforehand, having some awareness of your surroundings, and only pulling out the GPS when you've really screwed up and have no clue where you are. Figure it out once or twice on your own, and it ends up in long-term memory and you never have to worry about it again.

My girlfriend is terrible about that. I could drive her to the same location every day for a week, and if I handed her the keys on day 8 and told her to drive herself, she'd never make it.

 

[CharlieB]

Re: GPS nightmare

Any trip into unfamiliar territory I still pull out a map and sketch my own 'chart' of which turns to make.

Still don't have a GPS. Don't want one. Son has one, tells me how it has screwed him up a few times.

 

[DECK SWABBER 58]

Re: GPS nightmare

Real men don't need a GPS or directions, we just drive around until we find what we're looking for!!!

I can navigate much better without a GPS than my wife can with one... and if you take her GPS away, she's lost in the Wal-mart parking lot.

my paper maps don't let me down.

Any trip into unfamiliar territory I still pull out a map and sketch my own 'chart' of which turns to make.

Still don't have a GPS. Don't want one. Son has one, tells me how it has screwed him up a few times.

I still keep a map in my car, and use it all the time. Your situation was a bit different, but relying on technology has it's own set of drawbacks, and appear to have found a couple all in one night.

What's a GPS?

As mentioned paper maps don't ever fail. Guess it just depends on what century your we're born in. :facepalm:

 

[soggy_feet]

Re: GPS nightmare

Or what century your map was made in..

 

[dingbat]

Re: GPS nightmare

Like anything, you get what you pay for and what you put into it. Don’t update the maps on the regular basis and expect to find yourself lost now and then.

I’m on the road a lot for work. Pittsburgh today, Phoenix tomorrow, San Diego the following day. London, Frankfurt and Zurich the following week. I relay heavily on GPS to get me to customer facilities, hotels and restaurant. Paper maps are useless. Don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen street addresses on a paper maps. Mapquest and Google maps are almost as useless. Who carries a printer around with them? I used to leave my laptop open in the front seat of the car with mapquest running for a while. Got smart and bought a nice Garmin Nuvi with a lifetime map and traffic updates. Gets me where I am going 98.2% of the time w/o and issue.