Instructions from the Garmin lady...

flickr photo link: <Rickmansworth, 24 May 08>
Hi all, I've also been doing some other photo updates today, catching up on recent trips...
BARCELONA photos on flickr: <Barcelona, Mar 08>
24 May 08 FR202 DUB/STN 0630/0745
24 May 08 FR293 STN/DUB 1935/2050
We purchased a reasonable Sat Nav thingy last week. Let's call it "Garmin". It came pre-loaded with maps for Ireland, Britain & Europe, and Australia/USA, etc. can be purchased later. Being a basic model, it only has one voice, whom I now call the "Garmin lady"... It is she who says "stay left, keep left, take the 2nd exit on the roundabout", etc. Of course we've discovered that many roads around here, although probably centuries old, are not recognised by the Garmin lady, who immediately thinks you're tearing across the open countryside, and tries to correct you. It's at this point that I lower her volume. The Garmin lady also tried to send me down a one-way street in Dublin the other morning, after I'd dropped off Clare for a fish factory audit, located somewhere between Mountjoy Prison and an eye hospital in an old gothic pile that looked like a workhouse from the 1840's. Just the usual Dublin. Later that day, she did the same "one-way" trick again. So after that I ignored the Garmin lady - both her Dublin direction antics and her incredibly slow speed in acquiring an Irish satellite signal.
That was, until I switched on the Garmin lady again in the UK yesterday, after a short Ryanair hop from Dublin. This time, she acquired the satellite signal incredibly fast - is this a conspiracy against Ireland? Yes, the Garmin is truly portable & versatile, but the Budget car we'd hired at Stansted Airport had an incessant BEEP from the radio every 30 seconds - enough to drive you mad. We had to get the Budget kid to fix it. And as if the Korean factory worker that designed the beeping hadn't had enough of a laugh, every time you started the car, the radio was programmed to come on at Volume 10. Clare was not impressed. It was on the M25 that the Garmin followed suit, by beeping everytime we went past a traffic camera, then beeping incessently to tell us our average speed was 64 kph. That was, until we hit the crawling traffic after the M1, where every second car seemed to be overheating and the football fans had their windows wound down. Grinding to a halt with petrol bubbling away at $50 a litre...
But we had a very nice day in the UK - for my Aunt & Uncle's 50th Wedding Anniversary in Rickmansworth. We left Annagassan at 4.30am and got home at 10.30pm, which by our calculations is approx. half the journey time of our upcoming trip to Australia. We got to see everyone - all the aunts, uncles, cousins & their kids. Very good. The Ryanair pilot on the way back to Dublin seemed quite determined to make it home for a football match or something. We reversed away as soon as the doors were closed, tore down the Stansted taxiway at breakneck speed (I thought he was gonna try and lift the nose at one point), lined up and took off pronto, bumped our way back to Dublin, a couple of aerobatic turns, slammed it down, brakes on, olympic speed-record taxi back to the D Gates... I think we did 'door close' to 'door open' in about 45 mins.
We're off to France next weekend (long weekend in Ireland) - who knows what the Garmin lady will make of the French countryside? Then Australia in 3 weeks time. I guess we'll keep flying till the oil runs out...