GPS: Great - if you already know

If you already know where you are going, an in-car GPS unit can be helpful, and fun. But there are limitations to Global Positioning Satellite units. One of our riders received one at Christmas fand have been trying it out, intermittently.

I haven't yet had to go to a totally new area of the country. I did go to some new (for me) homes and businesses in our area. I programmed things, buzzed along, and tried them out. Here are some observations:

* Pronounciations are a hoot: "Doo-BWAH," for "DOO-Boys," "BrookVEAL" for "BROOKville," "Hahzen" for "Hazen," "Belephant" for "BELLEfonte," etc. Around here, that's amusing, not confusing. I know what the computerized voice means to say. But in Arkansas, I might find it disconcerting to hear a mispronounced name while driving at 65 mph, because I might mis-hear it as a wrong name and slam on the brakes.

* Danger: "Shortest route" vs. "fastest time" settings. From our house outside Brookville to the newspaper office in DuBois, the GPS followed my usual route, including 22 miles on Interstate 80. But en route back home, it kept telling me to get off I-80 at Route 830, the DuBois/Jefferson County Airport. The computer was accurate - but not correct. Getting off at the airport positions me to take the "shortest route" - over hills and dales to Hazen, then Richardsville, then home. In summer, fine. In winter ... I would be stuck for a week. I changed the "shortest" preference, and also increased the computer's likelihood of keeping us on paved roads and freeways.

* At our house, and at the home of our friends in Knox Dale, the driveways are on our left. But the computer says "Your destination is on the right." Umm ... that's where our mailbox is.

* If coming south to our house from Warren, the GPS (and also Mapquest) tell you to turn right from Route 36, onto Park Road. That's a dirt, township-maintained road with three steep hills. It is "plowed" only sporadically in wintertime. In springtime, it's a mud bog. If it doesn't look right, it probably isn't.

* The college kids who drove every single road to make the original maps used by GPS sometimes got it wrong. Going home, I turn off Route 36 onto Caldwell Corners Road. A quarter-mile later, Caldwell Corners bears to the right at a "Y." To the left is Ferguson Road. But the GPS tells me to turn left off Route 36 - onto Ferguson Road, and only at the Y does it mention Caldwell Corners Road. My guess: The original route-mapper followed Ferguson Road from its other end, and thought it ran all the way to Route 36. PennDOT and the Postal Service, however, say that the before-the-Y stretch is Caldwell Corners Road. I know the area, so no harm. But if in unfamiliar territory, I might have said bad words.

My friend and his wife, in Vermont in winter, found themselves in deep snow, following tracks made not by a car, not by a 4x4 SUV or truck - but by an all-terrain vehicle! Not a good situation in a low-slung car with all-season tires. The GPS unit has a wealth of information: Gas stations, food, scenic points of interest, etc. It can also plan "multi-stop" trips, handy if (1) you actually plan to have multiple stops, or (2) you want to go by a different route than the GPS is likely to suggest. When visiting kids-in-law in New Jersey, we dislike the GPS route through downtown Philadelphia. So we program Brookville-Hazelton, Hazelton-Norristown, Norristown-Burlington, N.J., Burlington-Mt.Laurel to get us around it.

But if we were going where we had never gone before, we wouldn't have thought of doing that - unless we had looked at a 20th Century thing, a ... map. I still carry a road atlas in every vehicle,. That way, if the GPS tells us to go north (as it does for one two-mile stretch on the above-mentioned trip) when our destination is clearly south, I at least know to question it, or check it out. In this instance, the GPS would be correct; we go north for two miles in order to connect with southbound I-295.

I do love the GPS's automatic-reset capability. When, en route home, I breeze past the Route 830/airport turnoff. The computer calmly recalculates, and doesn't even yell at me. In urban State College, the GPS was wonderful for rerouting us back to a restaurant or a store - IF we had pre-programmed an address.

My coworker reports that, near the Las Vegas airport, GPS got him stuck in 12-mile loops looking for a road that had been closed. His solution on his next trip? Ask a few human beings at the airport about new construction! Just pass the turn that is not correct, and use the re-routing, he suggests.

I still marvel at the fact that the computer knows precisely where our car is, by linking up with a satellite some 22,000 miles up in space. Then again ... so does Big Brother. So do a Predator drone and its guided missiles. So that's how the Taliban feels these days, huh? Good.