Interesting.

When I moved out to CA the most recent time, I took I-70. I got stuck in a freak blizzard around Vail Pass, and I thought I was going to die. I did, in fact, stop by FM to stretch my legs and test their (then-new) Westfield.





Sadly, no. I'll be on 80 all the way through, and I do have a bit of a slight schedule to keep to.








Oh, and I just thought of a riddle:

What do Jerry Seinfeld, Maury Povich, Charlie Sheen, Kaley Cuoco, Craig Allen and Joe Perez all have in common?

The answer will tell you exactly where I am headed (within about a 5 mile radius.)

Wait... so where are you going? Or did I miss where you said that? I'd love to do a drive through, or an extended trip through the mid-west, mostly up north into Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas. Drive safe.

The riddle you must solve.

New York.
The opposite of California.

Is it?

Or was Seinfeld filmed in Los Angeles, with only a few second-unit shots (eg: the diner exterior) actually coming from NYC?

Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, DC, Baltimore?

Jerry, Kaley, and Craig all have currently running shows set in NYC. [Edit: No they don't; Big Bang Theory is set in CA.] I am not sure where Maury or Anger Management is filmed.

Also, based on previous posts and your rent figure, I have to think Manhattan.

Ok, safe travels then!

DAY 3:

Touchdown in Peru, Illinois.

And now, a word about corn.


Here is corn:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601184


Here is some more corn.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601184


And yet more corn:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601184


And more corn still:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601184






And now, I would like to speak seriously for a moment about GPS navigators.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601184

My old GPS unit, purchased around 2004 or so, was not especially advanced. In fact, it was amazingly simplistic and limited. Its internal memory was only sufficient to hold the detail maps for a few states, and thus a cross-country drive required that I hook it up to my laptop every night and load new map data into it off of an actual CD-ROM for the next day's planned journey.

It did, however, have one redeeming feature.

To wit: when travelling upon the highway, it was intelligent enough to know that if I asked it to tell me the location of nearby gas stations or restaurants, I did not care one whit about places which I had passed 17 miles ago or which were significantly off the highwway, I was interested ONLY in locations which were AHEAD of me, and specifically, those which were located alongside my projected travel route.

This brand new Garmin Nuvi, while superior in nearly way to my ancient Magellen, lacks this one specific feature which, until now, I never even REALIZED was a feature- it was just the natural way that things worked... until I was deprived of it.

And it really pisses me off sometimes.






A word about rest areas:

In the state of Iowa, there are two types of rest areas. There are rest areas, and then there are modern rest areas:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601204

Now, "Modern" is a highly subjective word. To some, it evokes an architectural movement characterized by bold and experimental designs, ranging from Brutalism to Googie to highly abstract neo-Modernist designs which resemble the Nissan Cube.

To others, "Modern" suggests a state of advanced technological evolution, which might span the spectrum from practical 21st century knick-knacks to the optimistic mid-20th century visions of flying cars and robot butlers.

In the state of Iowa, the word "Modern" is simply short for "has indoor plumbing."






And now, back to the corn:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601204

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601204

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601204

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378601204




https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378602191

Miles traveled: 626
Fuel consumed: 44.81
MPG: 13.97 (I was pushing it pretty hard today, and I spent quite a while moving at 2 MPH through a traffic jam.)

Your route is nearing dangerously close to Detroit.

IIRC that highway that runs just south of the Michigan border is a toll road/highway. Just thought i'd pass along that info if you don't know. Sorry if you already knew this.

that corn is your tax dollars at work. and even when there is no corn, you still pay for it.

fucking corn.

Detroit? He is dangerously close to the murder capital of the USA: Chiraq (aka South Chicago).

That "feature" would be amazing Joe. Seems like any navigation system on a phone does it as well. During our honeymoon, my wife and I traveled from Portland, OR to Tahoe, to Sonoma, to San Fran, and back to Portland. We continually asked for gas and food (in and out of course). It hardly ever pointed out one in front of us.

Granted, 17 miles or 10 miles or even 5 miles really isn't much on a cross country trek. But when you're driving that much and know just how far you still have to go, any back tracking at all seems like an eternity.

You're not moving jobs to Garmin by any chance, are you?

Nope. Per populous Chicago doesn't even rank.

Top two are in Michigan, with Detroit being #2.
America's 10 Deadliest Cities 2012

Number per populous = higher chances.

I spit up my coffee when I read "corn, corn, dead people".

Excellent point. Also, those cities do not all share something in common. :hsugh:

And also dangerously right through the southern Chicago suburbs. Shitty area.



Yup.

We really do have a shitload of corn in this country.



That's just the thing- I never even realized this was a "feature", since it's just how my old unit worked. Same with the Hertz "Neverlost" GPS units, which I believe were also made by Magellan. You just hit the button that said "Tell me what services are available at all freeway exits which I am approaching," and it did. But it's not like this was a special thing- there was no button for "Tell me about services which are nowhere near the projected path which I am following, or which I passed 15 miles ago."

It'd be like if you booked a hotel room online, and when you got there and checked into your room, you found that there was no bed. You'd go back to the front desk and say "What the fuck? There's no bed in my room!" And then they'd say "When you made your reservation, you did not select the 'bed in room' feature on the form." And he'd have you. Because you'd always just assumed that all hotel rooms come with beds, and you never even thought to check the registration form to see if the specific hotel room you were booking differed from your mental image of the way the world works.


Nope.




Feel free to assign props. Braineack is catching up with me in the competition for "most heavily propped user on this whole forum."

Apparently Garmin added the "feature" you desire to its 2013 models.

Garmin Launches GPS With Magnetic Mount, Amps Up In-Car Tech | News & Opinion | PCMag.com


EDIT: I can't confirm this as Garmin doesn't explicitly say which models have this feature, but my suspicion is that it's limited to the "Advanced" series of GPS units. If you purchased one from the "Essential" series, you may not have it.

Greetings from Clarion, Pennsylvania.


What a tedious, boring drive.

Here is a hotel in Chicago. You can rent a room by the hour or by the week. It has air conditioning and TV:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378688046



Here is a guy who has a much cooler race-car trailer than any of us:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378688046



Here are some live fish:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378688046



On the plus side, the hotel is on Dolby Street. On the minus side, it's kind of a craphole. The entire place smells like a Vegas casino (a mixture of cigarette smoke and despair), and the room itself is a throwback to the 1980s.

Example. There is a microwave oven in the room. It has a mechanical knob that you turn, and a mechanical bell that goes "ding" when the knob winds down to 0.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378688612


Miles traveled: 550
Fuel consumed: 35.55
MPG: 15.47 (wow!)

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378688046

I would, but you refuse to drive 100+ miles out of your way to meet a nearly total stranger.


{pic of 1980's microwave}

I just donated that exact same model to my local makerspace for heating non-food items. It may be ugly and slow, but it has worked for more than 30 years. Not many products last like that anymore.