Average Jane's Other Traveling Companion

No description of our vacation would be complete without a mention of our Garmin StreetPilot c550, whom we've dubbed Inga.

If you have a GPS that speaks to you, I highly recommend that you assign a name to the voice. It's a lot more fun to refer to it as a character rather than just "the GPS."

Inga shepherded us to Nashville and all over the city while we were there. My husband has a good basic understanding of Nashville's layout from having lived there, but even he admitted that Inga knew the good, fast ways to get places.

She was also handy for finding nearby restaurants and other points of interest by name or category. "Cracker Barrel" appears pretty prominently in our "Recently found" list right now.

The one thing that Inga didn't handle very well was detours for gas and food while we were on the long highway drives back and forth from Kansas City to Nashville. This is probably due to my refusal to RTFM, because there must be some way to tell the GPS that you're just pausing your trip.

It was after one of these stops that Inga tried to lead us off the main highway somewhere in Illinois and divert us to many miles of two-lane highway. We speculated that this was where she turned us over to the brigands and highwaymen who really control her. Fortunately, she snapped out of it when we reminded her that we were heading home.

She redeemed herself by finding a shortcut through downtown St. Louis that must have saved us a good 10 minutes. Inga knows all the sneaky routes.

I have to admit that I don't use Inga particularly often at home, but she's fantastic for traveling. We'll definitely be working together a lot as summer road trip season kicks in.

Comments

[cagey]

I fought against getting a GPS because I thought it would spoil all the fun of navigation, but Manoj won the war. And I am glad he did! Around town, I use it to find new ways of getting around. After Anjali was born, I really struggled to get both her and Arun down for naps, so I drove them in the car - the GPS helped make it interesting and now, I really know the area in southern JoCo.

I am taking a few road trips this year and cannot wait to fire up the GPS.

[Valerie]

My Dad was given a GPS for Christmas the year before last. Usually he programs routes into it and then goes his own way, convinced that he knows better than the machine.

It's fun to watch. Someday the GPS is going to emit an exasperated sigh and say, "So why did you ask me if you're just going to ignore me?!?"

[Nuke]

Huh, it lets me post on this one, but not on your excellent Parthenon or Nashville entries.

I recently found a good deal (almost 50% off) on a new Garmin, so I got it. Haven't taken it too far yet, but I have been letting it run routes to common destinations. I figure it's nice to know alternate routes or shortcuts. So far I am calling her Samantha, as what shes called in the menu (US English TTS Female- Samantha).

I wish Garmin had more downloadable options for voices. After Logtar joked he liked his GPS because he liked beautiful women telling him what to do, I REALLY wanted to find a Mistress Natasha voice for him.

[Faith]

We have a Nuvi (Garmin). We have dubbed her "The Nuvi Bitch" because she can get pretty testy when we mess up on our route.

I never thought about giving her an actual name, though. Good idea!

[Keith Sader]

The default female voice on Garmin units is "Jill". I don't recall the default male voice name.

If it had a hard time with detours etc. make sure to check that your maps are up-to-date.

[GraceD]

Our GPS lady is actually a Senora - Senora Counsela. We love her but she does get insistently bitchy right before a turn.