The Deliverator – Wannabee

I am making final preparations for my trip, which begins next Tuesday. I will be spending Tuesday through the Friday in Minneapolis with my Aunt Nancy. We are planning to drive out to Glencoe to tend to my grandfather’s (on my father’s side) grave and see some of my ancestors stomping grounds. Afterwards, we are going to spend some time driving through some towns on the Mississippi that my Aunt likes. On Thursday, I will be renting a car to drive up to Hinckley, a small town about halfway between Minneapolis and Hibbing, most well known for having burned completely to the ground. I am going there to have lunch with my Grandma and Aunt Peggy and whomever else from my Iron Range half of the family decides to show up. On Friday, I will be flying out to Cleveland to see my brother Scott and will be there for two weekends and a full week in between. If my brother gets too busy mid to late in the week, I might fly down to see Jason in Missouri. I am going to have to play that one by ear.

In preparation for all this travelling, I loaded maps for most of MN and Ohio on my Jornada for use in MS Pocket Streets 2005. I purchased a Holux GM-270 compact flash GPS for use with my Jornada off eBay and was very pleased when it arrived this afternoon. I really didn’t expect it to arrive this soon. Its early arrival gave me some time to test it out prior to my upcoming adventure. Installation was simple. I didn’t have to do anything other than slap the card into a CF to PCMCIA adapter and slap it in the side of my Jornada. The card doesn’t require any drivers to be installed. You simply select its com port in your mapping application and away you go. The card doesn’t power on until the mapping application starts talking to it, so time to first fix can be a while. I tested my combo of S& T 2005 and the CF GPS this evening on Capitol Hill.

I walked from Pine street northwards along Broadway. I stopped in at Bailey/Coy Books and purchased Neil Gaiman’s new novel, Anansi Boys. I am not sure if I will take it with me on the trip, as I plan to travel light and am trying my utmost to not violate my bookshelf-based book abuse management system. I am looking forward to reading this, as well as seeing his new film, Mirrormask, which will be opening in Seattle at the Neptune while I am gone. While I made my way north, I came across a small group of oddballs spending a quiet Friday evening watching TV in their living room. The odd part being that their living room was on a trailer parked on the side of the street at the busiest section of Broadway. I stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the theater, snapped a few pics and continued northward, eventually turning around at the Harvard Exit Theater.

The GPS lost signal lock briefly a few times, but never for long enough for it to interfere with navigation. I always knew what the upcoming street intersection was long before reaching it. A good deal of Broadway constitutes an urban canyon, with 2 story buildings on either side of the street, lots of metal cars and lots of planted trees. If this GPS performed this well here, I think it should be able to handle the challenges of flatland well enough. Scott will be working during the week, so I will have a lot of free time in which to explore Cleveland. I will be doing most of my exploration on foot, as I won’t have access to a car during the day, unless I want to drive my brother to/from work. Cleveland is still heavily poluted due to its industrial past. I will have to avoid wearing synthetic clothing, least sparks cause the river to catch on fire.