Monday, June 08, 2009

Our Lady of Navigation

I gave thanks to “Our Lady of Navigation” many times while traveling in the Baltimore-Washington DC area on my Death of Meriwether Lewis book tour in June, 2009. I decided to try using the VZ Navigator feature on my new Verizon cell phone rather than rent a gps navigation unit with the rental car. The car rental navigation unit was $15 a day; the VZ Navigator optional feature for the cell phone was only $2.99 a day or $9.99 a month.
As the author of Lewis and Clark Road Trips, I have travelled over 8,000 miles using car GPS units. We have used them since the earliest models because our son and daughter-in-law work for Navteq, the world,s leading digital map maker, which was acquired by Nokia in 2007. Navteq supplies the VZ Navigator map database and route guidance.

For years I have yearned to have a “qwerty” keyboard to enter street addresses instead of the baffling virtual keyboards, and that is what sold me on the Verizon cell phone with its real keyboard. But I wondered about its small screen size, and where to put it. The young man who sold me the phone, an LG enV2 model, advised me to get ear buds so that the voice guidance of “the Lady” could be heard above traffic noise. I got the ear buds, plus a universal headphone adapter (2.5 mm to 3.5mm) for the smaller size jack hole of the cell phone. I also got a car charger cord.
I was very impressed by the quickness of response from the Lady, and the quality of route information. She was patient with me when I disregarded her instructions. I felt like we were cooperating together in getting me safely and sanely to my destinations, which were quite varied. I put the cell phone on the passenger seat, and would glance down occasionally to see how many miles before the next maneuver. The screen would count down the miles, and I knew that she would alert me with voice instructions at 0.3 miles on city streets, and 0.7 miles on highways as to upcoming lane changes and turns.
Driving back to my motel 30 miles from D.C. at night, in torrential rains, really tested my reliance on the Lady and I vowed that when I got home I would blog about it. After a decade of using gps navigation units, I would recommend this system as the best and most convenient that I have used.—Kira Gale
http://www.lewisandclarkroadtrips.com and http://www.deathofmeriwetherlewis.com

Posted by Kira Gale on 06/08/2009 at 02:58 PM

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