What Do You Mean We Have Reached Our Destination?

When the GPS wave started, spouse and I didn't grab our surfboards and ride it. We first wanted to test the waters. Friends had gotten a Magellan early on, and after a road trip with them, we were convinced that we were ready for our very own.

At the store we were undecided on a brand; the Magellan was somewhat familiar, and we had seen many Garmin ads, but the TomTom had the "Help" feature which appealed to the pessimistic/negative/worrywart aspects of our personalities, so TomTom is what we chose. Once home, we read the directions, connected to TomTom.com, and then went for a ride to test (and charge up) our new toy. We chose a female voice to give us directions, but she had the same name as one of our daughters, which would cause confusion, so we thought outside the box and named her Susie.

Susie was always pleasant, no matter how often we disobeyed her instructions. Not once did she call us a bad name or even sound a little impatient. We would drive past the little checkered flag on the screen and she would silently start recalculating the route to get us back there. We programmed all kinds of favorites in there; family, friends, restaurants, Disneyworld. There were a million points of interest, which sounded like a lot. Even though we click-agreed that we wouldn't operate the GPS while driving, we often operated while driving. Susie did not report us to the authorities.

Two years of harmony passed. One of our daughters bought a TomTom also, but it was A Step Up, Better Than Ours, The Latest Thing. It spoke street names before turns, it named highways and exits. Spouse and I and Susie were now two years older than we had been. We needed life to get even easier and Christmas was conveniently only a month away.

Off we went to Target to price a Susie Upgrade, then on to Best Buy to comparison shop. She was priced the same at both stores. Spouse presented me with my brand new TomTom, who purportedly spoke street names. Merry Christmas! Out to the car we went where we set up our new Susie (easier than thinking up another name) and prepared to hear Spoken Street Names. We got home with nary a Street Name spoken. Something was wrong. TomTom's Tech. Support is closed on Sundays, naturally.

Back to Best Buy we went, ready to exchange our defective Susie and ready to dispute the customary restock fee if necessary. When I had first programmed Susie in the parking lot of the Best Buy, there was something about a human voice not being able to do the warning messages, that only the computer voice could do that. I ignored this nonsense. On the drive back to Best Buy, spouse was reprogramming, and he chose the computer voice. Susie did mention a street name right before we got back to the store... Once at BB, a nice Geek Squad member named Liam went to work and said that it should be working now. We noticed on the display that there was a Green Bell icon that had not been there before, and were excited and filled with hope (after all it was the Christmas season).

Once in the car, we plugged Susie in, programmed her for home, and there were lots of possible Street Names to be Spoken. And ... Success! We got exit numbers, we got highways, we got street names! What joy! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! And anyone that accidentally deletes the Green Bell icon on Susie is a rotten egg.