Bokkie
03-14-2004, 04:50 AM
Hello everyone, Radio Bokkie is back on the air! Time to rock-and-roll. First my apologies for such a long post, but those who know me would not expect anything else!
We hit the ground hard (literally) in Pisa a week ago. The hire car we were given was about as basic as it can get, a Daewoo Matiz, which is one category above Fred Flintstone’s luxury sedan. The paperwork contained a disclaimer against damage under the car, and you know something, the state of the roads we had to ride on was all the proof we needed that there are some things that insurance cannot provide for. A larger car than ours might have handled the um, ruts, trenches, potholes, caverns, call them what you will, with some impunity. To some extent, the road mixture of concrete and tarmac and stone was almost African-esque in its patchwork quilt style, and these roads tested my Garmin beanbag to levels that even the most stringent regulations could never have foreseen. Thankfully, the beanbag survived. The iQue was an absolute necessity. In a country where we knew none of the language and roads signs we could not read, we trusted implicitly in Betty’s ability to get us where we needed to, and for the most part she did, but like a skilled craftsman, she can only work as well with the tools and material she is given to use, namely, the maps. More about this later.
No trip to a country like Italy can ever be described in words that match the experiences we enjoyed. Firstly, the Italian people were generally a delight to meet. We were well received just about everywhere we went. To be sure, Florence station (Santa Maria Novella) was as impersonal as it could get. If you have never been to Tuscany, then go there. We were rooted in a medieval town called San Gimignano which was close to Florence, Pisa, Siena, Volterra and the countryside of Chianti. To experience the delight of a nation that is so family-oriented is a pleasure. No lager louts in sight, no piles of vomit, no drunken foreigners, but two things, somewhat oddly, do stand out: owners who let their dogs dump wherever they want; and it almost seemed that one in two of the population smoke. Seldom did we ever find a restaurant that was vietato fumatore. Whilst trying to duck under the clouds of cigarette smoke, we were hard pressed to look at what we wanted to look at whilst keeping a wary eye on the ground trying to avoid the piles of doggy-poo that in some streets almost seemed to grace every paving stone in two! For what looks to be a nation of smokers, I wonder how the Italians maintain relatively good health and yet what would the statistics be for lung cancer in that country? We had endless espressos and cappuccinos and like the adage suggests, eat where the locals eat is true. Only once did we have a meal that was not worthy. Perhaps there is more cut and thrust driving in the major cities, but the roads in Tuscany that week were mostly our own. The car had no reliable fuel gauge and would dart from empty to full and back again in a moment. You are full-full on half-full and half-full on full-full. Worrying indeed as we never really knew how much fuel we had. The drivers were generally not as bad as the stereotype suggests they should be. Where we stopped and slowed to let people in, only once were we ever thanked. Turn signals seem to be optional. And when I had the audacity to turn left from a straight-ahead lane only, we were greeted with a torrent of abuse by the refuse collection truck behind us. We also had the occasion to do the tourist-thing in Pisa. Of course, everyone heads for that ultimate Pisa icon – the tower. You know, the tower is quirky, without it Pisa would probably fade on the map, but in a strange way, the leaning tower actually ‘works’. There were endless photographs being taken by people using fore-shortened perspective and they would place their hands outwards as if holding the tower up. All very amusing. Yes, we went to the Uffizi in Florence and whilst the experience was slightly tainted by the organized tour groups, I don’t think anyone could not be held captivated by Botticelli’s painting of the birth of Venus, she standing in a giant clam shell, the painting among all that defines the renaissance age. We were sad, very sad to get back to the architecturally destitute town we live in, Crawley. Crawley, Firenze, Crawley, San Gimignano, Crawley, Radda in Chianti. We know where we would rather live and so admire the people who live in that captivating country. A fabulous week in a nation that did so much to make us feel at home.
Alas, any tale that cheers the hero must boo at the villain. Our hero and villain was Betty (or should it be Bettina?). For the most part, the iQue was faultless. I had the Gillson antenna mounted inside by the windscreen. Accuracy was generally better than 5 meters. The only time we ever used a paper map was to study it for places we would go to the next day. One thing the iQue did was give us the freedom to drive where we wanted. We often took narrow roads that darted in all directions and there was the security of always knowing where we were heading. Where we did route specifically, she made the whole confusing issue of sorting out one-way streets, turns here, turns there, generally 99.9% accurate and reliable. Where she did wrong, the consequences were dramatic and caused my eyebrows to raise in puzzlement.
One : navigating through Poggibonsi, the purple route line just disappeared. A quick tap on the GPS screen showed all was well. A soft reset was necessary to get her back online. For some reason she lost her mind, and in the ensuing panic in rush hour traffic, I felt utterly helpless as we sought somewhere to stop and arm myself with the stylus. It took several minutes before Betty would come back to us. I had visions of an RMA in a town we did not know.
Two: she once lost her mind again, and time after time barfed “Off route, recalculating” when we were on the route. Looking at the GPS screen, the accuracy was no better than 90 meters. Yikes! What had gone wrong? Could that have explained the recalculation problem? I think so, but maybe you have some ideas?
Third: a really odd quirk with one route calculation. She told me to turn right. I did. The tarmac suddenly ended and a badly graded road took over. I stopped. This could not be right. I zoomed out a bit. What she was doing was taking us maybe 1km down this track, and then a large loop around what seemed in the distance to be a vineyard and then promptly back again. In short, a dead-end track that served no purpose. I turned the car around, headed back to the main road, let Betty recalculate and we were happy again. I wonder if Betty had not reached some anthropomorphic state and was actually enjoying being in Tuscany herself? Perhaps she had secretly made contact with another iQue? Disturbing. Very disturbing. I must keep an eye on her.
Four: the voice prompts can be confusing. There is a big difference between ‘bear right’ and ‘turn right’ A few times I turned where a bear right was more appropriate. This was very true where a road bent in one direction and another road forked off from it. Betty would say turn right when we were on the road already. I suspect she was confused about the turn right branching off it and maybe she could not adequately distinguish the road we were on and which prompt to use? It would have been better if she had remained quiescent. We got use to this anomaly.
Five: the colours, oh, those colours that look so pale and washed out in sunlight and that made the route line difficult to follow. Fortunately, in the loosest sense, the weather was quite dreary half of the time so the line was easy to follow and see. Other times, it was nigh impossible and in a country we knew not, trying to cope with unfamiliar street signs, and on a side of the road we are not used to driving on, was perhaps my most annoying gripe. Please Garmin, let us choose the colours.
Six: maps. There were quite a few places where we were on a road, not new roads mind, but well established ones that were not on CS6. There were small towns we drove through that simply do not exist on CS6 except by way of a name only. My impression of this is that NavTech need to do much more to bring the Italian countryside into line with the rest of the country. It may serve some who need to use only the autostrada, but as a serious navigation tool, CS6 did let the side down. NavTech, maybe it’s time to revisit the countryside?
Seven: Breve in Chiant is a small town. It confused Betty – big time. We stopped for a while and when she took us out, she was clueless. I followed her directions. She did well to avoid the one way streets and she brought us back again to where we were. It was almost Hotel California time. Eventually, I stopped the navigation and just aimed for somewhere that was sign-posted and got out of town far enough for her to get her bearings. That was odd.
Eight: Going from Pisa to San Gimignano was fine and direct. Going back, she routed us through industrial areas. I never knew why she did that. Maybe that was just a quirky route she thought was best.
So, did Betty perform well? Absolutely! I share these eight points if only to illustrate that you do need to be cautious to a limited extent. GPS is not a magic panacea that serves all navigation purposes but without Betty, we would not have explored so much as we did or enjoyed sitting back and enjoying the view as much if we had to rely on paper maps alone. If you travel to another country, don’t leave home without her! I know it all sounds sickly sweet, but Garmin, a big thank you for making something that really contributed to the amazingly enjoyable week we had.
We hit the ground hard (literally) in Pisa a week ago. The hire car we were given was about as basic as it can get, a Daewoo Matiz, which is one category above Fred Flintstone’s luxury sedan. The paperwork contained a disclaimer against damage under the car, and you know something, the state of the roads we had to ride on was all the proof we needed that there are some things that insurance cannot provide for. A larger car than ours might have handled the um, ruts, trenches, potholes, caverns, call them what you will, with some impunity. To some extent, the road mixture of concrete and tarmac and stone was almost African-esque in its patchwork quilt style, and these roads tested my Garmin beanbag to levels that even the most stringent regulations could never have foreseen. Thankfully, the beanbag survived. The iQue was an absolute necessity. In a country where we knew none of the language and roads signs we could not read, we trusted implicitly in Betty’s ability to get us where we needed to, and for the most part she did, but like a skilled craftsman, she can only work as well with the tools and material she is given to use, namely, the maps. More about this later.
No trip to a country like Italy can ever be described in words that match the experiences we enjoyed. Firstly, the Italian people were generally a delight to meet. We were well received just about everywhere we went. To be sure, Florence station (Santa Maria Novella) was as impersonal as it could get. If you have never been to Tuscany, then go there. We were rooted in a medieval town called San Gimignano which was close to Florence, Pisa, Siena, Volterra and the countryside of Chianti. To experience the delight of a nation that is so family-oriented is a pleasure. No lager louts in sight, no piles of vomit, no drunken foreigners, but two things, somewhat oddly, do stand out: owners who let their dogs dump wherever they want; and it almost seemed that one in two of the population smoke. Seldom did we ever find a restaurant that was vietato fumatore. Whilst trying to duck under the clouds of cigarette smoke, we were hard pressed to look at what we wanted to look at whilst keeping a wary eye on the ground trying to avoid the piles of doggy-poo that in some streets almost seemed to grace every paving stone in two! For what looks to be a nation of smokers, I wonder how the Italians maintain relatively good health and yet what would the statistics be for lung cancer in that country? We had endless espressos and cappuccinos and like the adage suggests, eat where the locals eat is true. Only once did we have a meal that was not worthy. Perhaps there is more cut and thrust driving in the major cities, but the roads in Tuscany that week were mostly our own. The car had no reliable fuel gauge and would dart from empty to full and back again in a moment. You are full-full on half-full and half-full on full-full. Worrying indeed as we never really knew how much fuel we had. The drivers were generally not as bad as the stereotype suggests they should be. Where we stopped and slowed to let people in, only once were we ever thanked. Turn signals seem to be optional. And when I had the audacity to turn left from a straight-ahead lane only, we were greeted with a torrent of abuse by the refuse collection truck behind us. We also had the occasion to do the tourist-thing in Pisa. Of course, everyone heads for that ultimate Pisa icon – the tower. You know, the tower is quirky, without it Pisa would probably fade on the map, but in a strange way, the leaning tower actually ‘works’. There were endless photographs being taken by people using fore-shortened perspective and they would place their hands outwards as if holding the tower up. All very amusing. Yes, we went to the Uffizi in Florence and whilst the experience was slightly tainted by the organized tour groups, I don’t think anyone could not be held captivated by Botticelli’s painting of the birth of Venus, she standing in a giant clam shell, the painting among all that defines the renaissance age. We were sad, very sad to get back to the architecturally destitute town we live in, Crawley. Crawley, Firenze, Crawley, San Gimignano, Crawley, Radda in Chianti. We know where we would rather live and so admire the people who live in that captivating country. A fabulous week in a nation that did so much to make us feel at home.
Alas, any tale that cheers the hero must boo at the villain. Our hero and villain was Betty (or should it be Bettina?). For the most part, the iQue was faultless. I had the Gillson antenna mounted inside by the windscreen. Accuracy was generally better than 5 meters. The only time we ever used a paper map was to study it for places we would go to the next day. One thing the iQue did was give us the freedom to drive where we wanted. We often took narrow roads that darted in all directions and there was the security of always knowing where we were heading. Where we did route specifically, she made the whole confusing issue of sorting out one-way streets, turns here, turns there, generally 99.9% accurate and reliable. Where she did wrong, the consequences were dramatic and caused my eyebrows to raise in puzzlement.
One : navigating through Poggibonsi, the purple route line just disappeared. A quick tap on the GPS screen showed all was well. A soft reset was necessary to get her back online. For some reason she lost her mind, and in the ensuing panic in rush hour traffic, I felt utterly helpless as we sought somewhere to stop and arm myself with the stylus. It took several minutes before Betty would come back to us. I had visions of an RMA in a town we did not know.
Two: she once lost her mind again, and time after time barfed “Off route, recalculating” when we were on the route. Looking at the GPS screen, the accuracy was no better than 90 meters. Yikes! What had gone wrong? Could that have explained the recalculation problem? I think so, but maybe you have some ideas?
Third: a really odd quirk with one route calculation. She told me to turn right. I did. The tarmac suddenly ended and a badly graded road took over. I stopped. This could not be right. I zoomed out a bit. What she was doing was taking us maybe 1km down this track, and then a large loop around what seemed in the distance to be a vineyard and then promptly back again. In short, a dead-end track that served no purpose. I turned the car around, headed back to the main road, let Betty recalculate and we were happy again. I wonder if Betty had not reached some anthropomorphic state and was actually enjoying being in Tuscany herself? Perhaps she had secretly made contact with another iQue? Disturbing. Very disturbing. I must keep an eye on her.
Four: the voice prompts can be confusing. There is a big difference between ‘bear right’ and ‘turn right’ A few times I turned where a bear right was more appropriate. This was very true where a road bent in one direction and another road forked off from it. Betty would say turn right when we were on the road already. I suspect she was confused about the turn right branching off it and maybe she could not adequately distinguish the road we were on and which prompt to use? It would have been better if she had remained quiescent. We got use to this anomaly.
Five: the colours, oh, those colours that look so pale and washed out in sunlight and that made the route line difficult to follow. Fortunately, in the loosest sense, the weather was quite dreary half of the time so the line was easy to follow and see. Other times, it was nigh impossible and in a country we knew not, trying to cope with unfamiliar street signs, and on a side of the road we are not used to driving on, was perhaps my most annoying gripe. Please Garmin, let us choose the colours.
Six: maps. There were quite a few places where we were on a road, not new roads mind, but well established ones that were not on CS6. There were small towns we drove through that simply do not exist on CS6 except by way of a name only. My impression of this is that NavTech need to do much more to bring the Italian countryside into line with the rest of the country. It may serve some who need to use only the autostrada, but as a serious navigation tool, CS6 did let the side down. NavTech, maybe it’s time to revisit the countryside?
Seven: Breve in Chiant is a small town. It confused Betty – big time. We stopped for a while and when she took us out, she was clueless. I followed her directions. She did well to avoid the one way streets and she brought us back again to where we were. It was almost Hotel California time. Eventually, I stopped the navigation and just aimed for somewhere that was sign-posted and got out of town far enough for her to get her bearings. That was odd.
Eight: Going from Pisa to San Gimignano was fine and direct. Going back, she routed us through industrial areas. I never knew why she did that. Maybe that was just a quirky route she thought was best.
So, did Betty perform well? Absolutely! I share these eight points if only to illustrate that you do need to be cautious to a limited extent. GPS is not a magic panacea that serves all navigation purposes but without Betty, we would not have explored so much as we did or enjoyed sitting back and enjoying the view as much if we had to rely on paper maps alone. If you travel to another country, don’t leave home without her! I know it all sounds sickly sweet, but Garmin, a big thank you for making something that really contributed to the amazingly enjoyable week we had.