Yesterday was a long day, but the travel was fine. We were traveling on Southwest Airlines and they are always good to travel with.
GeezerSon brought along his new GPS receiver so that he could try an experiment. It’s like most of the other new-style receivers that has the picture screen that shows you a graphic of where you are. He had read in a newspaper column (yes, he’s one of the few remaining folks that still reads newspapers) that if you hold a GPS near the airplane cabin window, it will get a signal.
And sure enough, it worked. In fact, it worked within 3-4 ft. of the window. If you’ve never tried it, it is entertaining to watch the streets literally race by on the screen. FossilMedic would kill to be able to drive those chicanes. There are two other benefits from it, too. For one thing, it gives the speed of travel that the device is moving, so you can watch that as you go. I was surprised to see that the plane reached over 470 mph within just a couple of minutes while it was still in a steep climb up to the assigned altitude.
The main advantage is to be able to identify what town you’re flying over. You know what I mean there. You see that settlement way down below and you can’t guess what it is. Oftentimes you don’t even know what state you’re in. (And no “state of confusion” jokes, ok?) So by learning what town is below you can learn just where you are.
It’s hard to be entertained while you’re in an airplane. But this gadget kept the three of us occupied for most of the journey. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to do that.
Entertaining or not, we’d better get this equipment checked out. I’m going to get some good, strong coffee going.
