The Shortest Way

[pdub]

When I first got a GPS thing for the trip to the rained-out race in Kentucky....I think I may be at least the next-to-last person to get one.

Like any new toys and tools, I played with it for days, completely fascinated by a technology I had ignored until then. I punched in home, and work, and the destination to the race track in Kentucky, and at the end of the trip, after it found the WalMart and the Home Depot in a town I knew nothing about, I'm totally sold on it. Don't know when I'll need it again, but I'm sold on it.

So from work to home....I know the way. I know the shortest way and the fastest way. Being a measuring kind of guy, I did all of that when we first moved in here over 3 years ago. I know the way.

So out of curiosity I said to the GPS unit, the shortest way home from work, just to see what it said.

Jill, (the female voice of Garmin) showed me something I never knew. She said to go straight when I always turned right instead. She said there's a road that I know good and well by now doesn't exist. That will cut the trip by nearly a mile. No way. There's not even a road there. I know there's not. This newfangled GPS thing is just WRONG.

I had to go look at the spot where Jill wanted me to turn.

Sure enough, there is a road there. Here it is:

[HEMI]

A "road to nowhere projeck" funded by congress?

[LORENSWIFE]

We have a road right to the side of us that on all maps says you can get through, GPS, Google etc. Our vigilante neighbor from 20 years ago blocked that road up, and it has been that way ever since. We don't mind it being blocked though, Loren and I sat out in the road across the street from our house Saturday for about 3 1/2 hours, just looking and deiciding what to do with different parts of the yard, talking about work, had the radio on, whatever and just enjoying each other's companyy...we had a few liquid libations etc. Not one car went past us.


I think GPS does not know how many people out there reconfigure the roads in their areas for various reasons...

~gail

[Grumpy]

PeeWee, I will probably be the "last one" to have a GPS, everyone else in the family has one, I'm the lone hold out. As for that road in the picture, yes I'm sure it was funded as being "shovel ready"!

[DanStokes]

Nope, no GPS here. ME's car does have OnStar but lately the advisors have gone to hell. Hope they get back to training them again.

Our circle evidently was planned to have some entrances that never happened - most map programs try to bring folks in on a road that doesn't exist. We always tell frinds to ignore the GPS and follow our directions. Turns out it's a good thing - few door-to-door annoyances.

Dan