A long trip

I spent a few years as one of the thousands of drivers that risk their lives on a daily basis in the Washington, DC beltway. In my case, it also included the Dulles Toll Road, which means an extra dosage of danger. These are very wide, multilane roads, where almost everyone seems to be driving no less than 20 MPH over the speed limit. Risk driving slower than the pack and it feels like they are trying to run you out of the road.

If the weather cooperated, it was not bad. I had a 1993 Mazda Miata LE, basically a street legal club racer. As long as I stayed the hell away from semis and taller vehicles, most of the other cars seemed to see me fine. If they did not see me, I had air horns in the car, which made it sound like, well, a semi.

I also cheated. I was on flex time, so I would start work at the house, until around 9:00 AM. If I took the old Georgetown Pike, I could avoid the Dulles Toll Road completely, while still having a blast. By that time the Pike is clean, and the Miata loved that road. This left me just a few miles of beltway, then off as soon as I crossed the American Legion bridge for more back roads into Bethesda, MD.

In the afternoon I left at 3:00 PM unless we wanted to golf at River Road in Potomac, MD. If I could leave Bethesda at 3:00 PM it meant avoiding the traffic flow issues when River Road hits the Beltway. I could go home and work a few more hours, having spent less than two hours in the day actually driving.

Had I tried to drive at the normal hours, it would have meant up to an extra hour a day just driving.

When I switched jobs, my new office was across the street from a metro rail station. A month later I had given away my Miata to a charity, since I did not feel like paying insurance on a car that was being driven less than 50 miles per month (down from 300).

In this current job I telecommute 100%, I only go to one of our offices a few times per year. Yesterday I had to go to a different office, 50 miles away. 50 miles back when I was in Germany, or during my first few years in Virginia would have not made me blink. That was then. Now? It might as well be 300 miles.

I decided to try to use a GPS receiver, a TomTom One 130. It was the first time that I ever used GPS in a vehicle.

It was awesome. The device was able to predict my arrival within one minute, and I did not get lost until the last 40 yards of the trip because I did not believe that it was telling me to make the right turn that I needed (I was wrong of course). The only problem is that it took me through the beltway and I95, so it was basically white knuckles all the way.

For the return trip I forced it to ignore I95, the beltway and the three biggest roads close by. The end result? A slower route that was 10 miles short. For the first 15 minutes or so it sent me through back roads with really beautiful scenery. I was a bit concerned that it was driving me in circles, but it was obvious that I was making progress. It sent me through back roads almost all the way to Rockville, MD. From Rockville it told me to hit I-270 (AKA "The Parking Lot") which was empty at that time of the evening, then a few miles of beltway into Virginia.

This is an area that I know well, so I could have driven over I-270 and keep going straight until I hit the Potomac, which would have let me skip all of the beltway on the Maryland side until just before the American Legion bridge.

After I crossed the bridge I skipped the planned route, it wanted me to hit route 7, but I knew that the Georgetown Pike would be empty. The GPS receiver did not struggle recalculating, but it did keep trying to give me ways to re-join route 7.

Not too bad a trip, and even with the detour I again arrived within one minute of the original predicted ETA. After this I don't think I can drive a long distance without GPS. Even if I know where I am going to, it is just too nice to have an accurate ETA prediction based on your position and speed.