Road Trip Planning Software

[Jon Wehrenberg]

The ultimate:

Farting in a pressurized plane. Especially when you sit in the front seat and the outflow valves are in the rear bulkhead.

Life is good.

[Jerry Winchester]

The ultimate:

Farting to pressurize your plane

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I will pass along some wisdom my wife and I have learned after 44 years.

We know friends have become close friends when we can openly discuss bodily functions without feeling embarrassed.

I think we are getting to that point here.

I don't think the administrator or webmaster had a clue that this group would sink to the lowest levels this soon. And what makes this even more unbelievable is that when folks see us tooling down the highway in our buses they think we are hoity-toity snobs.

If only they knew.

[Jerry Winchester]

Well to get back to the original thought, I bought the MS software thru Amazon and installed it last week. I had been working on a Houston-Jackson-Yellowstone-Salt Lake-Las Vegas-Grand Canyon-Monument Valley-Houston jaunt for the beginning of the summer and had been using MapQuest and an Excel spreadsheet to show the miles, times, fuel consumption and cost. I loaded that route to see how it performed.

The new software took a little work to get sorted out, but worked pretty good. It was only marginally better than the clunky way I was doing it. However it printed out some nice maps and directions complete with start and milestone times.

Then I took the whole thing on a road test to College Station this afternoon. I got the one with the GPS module (can you have too many GPS units?) It worked well on the laptop and the big map was scalable and very readable. The chick's voice giving directions wasn't naggy or harsh, so that was a plus.

However, the one thing it didn't do was keep the snapperhead girls in the back seat from asking "Where are we? or Are we there yet?" Go figure.

[MangoMike]

Jerry,

Your story about DEPARTING brought tears to my eyes. Gawd it was funny.

Mike

[Steve Cooper]

I just installed the Microsoft Streets & Trips with GPS locator on my laptop about three weeks ago and I love it. So far, I've only used in the car since I have the Kenwood system in the coach, but it's relatively easy to use, and has a ton of information available. I'm really looking forward to using on a trip that I haven't made a hundred times before to get the real benefit of the trip routing, etc...
Best part was that it was on sale at Office Depot for $95.00 and I had a gift certificate for $50.00 which brought down the total cost to $45.00
What's not to love?
And like was said earlier, you can never have too many GPS's

[rfoster]

THIS BOARD IS BETTER EVERY DAY; NOT ONLY HELPFUL BUT NOW OVERFLOWING WITH COMEDY AND ENTERTAINMENT!
I HAVE MICROSOFT STREETS AND TRIPS WHICH I LIKE PRETTY GOOD. i HAVE HAD SOME DELORME SOFTWARE BEFORE THIS (MAP AND GO) AND PREFER THE MS. I ALSO USE THE GARMIN STREET PILOT GPS -WHEN ON THE ROAD. IT WILL FIND RESTURANTS, REST STOPS, VARIOUS RETAIL OUTLETS IF YOU HIT THE CORRECT MENUS. IT TALKS TO ME BUT NEVER ASK PERSONAL QUESTIONS, SO YOU CAN PERFORM A VARIETY OF TASK WITH OUT INTERFERENCE - EVEN HAS BUS MENU NO EXPERIENCE WITH LOW OVERPASSES YET.

WHEN I FIRST SHOPPED FOR A PORTABLE GPS I THOUGHT I WANTED A LARGE SCREEN, BUT WAS TOLD BY THE SALES PERSON THE GARMIN STREET PILOT WAS THE PREFERRED CHOICE BASED ON EXPERIENCE. I RELUCTANLY WENT ALONG WITH IT AND HAVE FOUND THE VERBAL INSTRUCTIONS ARE EASIER TO FOLLOW THAN TRYING TO LOOK AT A SCREEN WHILE DRIVING. HOPE THIS INFO HELPS SOMEONE.
- IN ADDITION THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF EAST TENN IS HARD TO BEAT. ROGER

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I have a Magellan and it has the voice which is very helpful to the driver, but my passengers hate listening to her.

One thing I learned real quick is while GPS is nice it is not like the GPS in a plane that will not lead you into a bad situation. The highway GPS units do not know you are a bus and there have been numerous occasions where I caught it trying to guide me down a street with load limits or where there were height limits. There is no substitute for using the trucker's atlas and reviewing the height restrictions section if you are exploring new territory.

Also, upgrades are essential. I found two specific areas where my GPS has not caught up with the highway construction. The area SW or Orlando where the roads around I4 and 192 are being completely revised mess up the GPS and where 295 joins 95 south of Jacksonville is completely revised also. My maps show it, but the GPS hasn't caught up. You still need to be ahead of things unless you have the ability to back up.

[Jerry Winchester]

And all this from a man who can't upgrade his GPS on a computer and has to fart to pressurize his plane.

What a wizard

And Mr. R. Foster - one of the charter member agreements on this board is having fun at the expense of others. MangoMike is in charge of new member hazing, but he is so damn lazy he wants Jon to shine his holes. What's up with that?

Welcome aboard and let Jon know if there is anything he can do to make your coach shinier. Is that a word, shinier? Lew, help me out here...

[rfoster]

Jerry: Thanks for the welcome comment. This board has already saved me more than the price of admission many times plus the entertainment value - well- uh--
but anyway - the board led me to talk to Jon who has same coach as I so I'll tell you this story. Recently the small electrical compartment under the drivers window would not unlock on my coach. The key would turn but to no effect. I studied the lock underneath (steering compartment) and determined if the two were identical, i could get to it with a slim jim . But being a new owner and could not remember the lock - having seen it only once or twice at most. I called Jon and he was kind enough to check his and describe them as being identical I was able to relase the two large screws and work a slim jim type rod in and in less than a minute I was able to break into my own coach. Jon and I decided that since there were no valuables in these compartments - I will probably leave the key lock unlocked and just use the lock screws. The Cam lever on the backside of the lock traveled beyond the track that it is supposed to operate in. A good bend and it was back on track. Hope this info helps someone. - but thanks to the board and Jon I am in.
roger