The Fast and the Feckless

Normally I clothe myself in a willful ignorance of cars and toss my reluctant driver hat on whenever I step out of my house, but that's just me - I clearly have problems, not all related to driving. Driving in the US was a weird experience. First Hertz had upgraded me to a monster SUV. "But I want a smaller car" is probably something that doesn't happen much in Hertz. There was a brief moment of blankness until the light behind the assistants eyes switched on. Right, your from Europe aren't you! Then there was the fact that Boston was in the midst of experiencing a it's worst storm on record - not that you would be allowed to forget it. Local stations were running STORMTRACK[tm] - minute by minute updates of the damp and slightly overflowing parts of the state. Top tip, when attempting to drive a car (automatic) that you've never tried to drive before in a country you've never driven in before, to a place you only have vague directions to - try not to do it in the middle of a lightning storm with limited visibility.

On the up though, I got one of the GPS gizmos (NAVTEQ rebranded) from Hertz - well it was either that or go for the Hummer upgrade (on special offer this month - no kidding). They really do work quite nicely - I was incredibly impressed. They were really good on the freeways, pikes and the nest of crazy turn-offs. Driving in cities was less impressive. Must be something to do with the lack of precision. Being me, I got lost a couple of times and once reprogrammed it always helped me find my way back. The only drawback is the tunnel vision you get while using one. You tend to listen slavishly to their wibblings. I found myself circling a couple of times due to ambiguous instructions when all I had to do was look up at the giant signage stuck to the upper stories of the building on my left which indicated my hotel.

While getting ready for the trip, I had tried a couple of web-sites. Google maps was useless. It's interface makes computing a route from the airport to my hotel really easy. Unfortunately the route calculated brought you through several city areas. There was a much simpler route taking the I-90 and the I-95 basically past the hotel. But there's no way to recalculate. Secondly, the instructions printed are pretty hard to read and more importantly, not easy to remember.

Next up was Yahoo maps - pointless if you don't know the intersection. I new the address. So basically tough.

Mapquest (www.mapfinder.com) was the best. The interface was simple and easy to use and the directions were spot on. Clear and easy to use. Directions even had nice map symbols that corresponded to the driving signage. Took the most direct route using the freeways and along with the general map included local maps for exiting the airport and accessing the hotel.

Finally map24.com was also fantastic. The interface is java-based, but given what they do with it it's forgiveable. Nice search capabilities with proper find stuff along the way features. Generally the interface rocks, with spin, grab, move, bounce, pan, zoom and tilt. The way google earth should work. But the nicecest feature was the auto-flyover. Pointless but slick none the less. Being suitably impressed I decided to checkout Ireland. It covers it completely (which shouldn't be remarkable - but it is). It knows lots of local features (e.g. hotels, petrol stations), but it also knows one-way streets. So I decided to put it to the test and get it to calculate my cycle route to work. It did only via Stephens Green (which I don't cycle), but handily you can plop stopover points on the way and get the route automatically recalculated. It's the nicest route-planner I've ever seen.