Interesting trip with early GPS

[Rick Law]

There is a thread about what to do with an old GPS.  It reminded me of one of the most interesting thing I did.  I do not want to hi-jack that thread, so I start this new one to share with you.

When consumer GPS was first on market and in-car GPS was yet a distant dream, this first generation handheld GPS for sport man came to market.  No capability of maps – just raw current longitude and latitude display with distance to target longitude latitude.  I had to get myself one, drove hours to a place that actually had it…

(Many years ago…) So, I got this Europe business trip that I go at least once a year.  This one time, my family tagged along, result was, I had to drive from Stuttgart (Germany) to Antwerp (Belgium).

Car GPS was not yet in existence.  I didn't had much time to prepare.  I got this idea and instead of just grabbing maps of major highways, I took time to note the major path(road)-change’s Long and Lat.  Now it is called Way Points on GPS.   So, with notes on road ID tape to the dash board (Highway X, from this Long-Lat to this Long-Lat), I drove from Stuttgart to Antwerp (with family sleeping in the back seat).

That was one of the fun-nest thing I have done.  The few zig-zags were very confusing since the Long-Lat distance is not confirmative like driving directly towards the target.  The distance to target just increase and decrease as one do the zig-zag.  It was very easy to loose one's sense of direction.

I did got lost at one point.  I planned on going through Luxemburg to Belgium.  On the map, I found this last stretch of highway (A4?) that goes to the Germany-Luxemburg border.  The same highway is in both Germany and Luxemburg.   On the map, the highway seems to disappear right at the border of Germany and reappear on the other side in Luxemburg.  I didn’t think much of a missing 1-2km stretch of road, thinking the map probably has an error at the border since a highway can't just vanished at border crossing.  Nope, indeed there was a valley (ravine) and no road there.  The highway ended at a T at the edge of a deep ravine.

I had no map of the area, so, I just followed any main road (at least 1 lane in each direction), find a crossing, and continue to head towards that Long-Lat I noted on the Luxemburg side.  Had I not noted the longitude latitude of the highway in the Luxemberg side, I would have no idea of where to go.  I was able to get to "the other side" of the ravine, found the highway entrance and carried on.  That 1-2 hours side trip was interesting as well, nothing like getting lost in a foreign country, in the country side, and getting darker by the minute as night is about to begin.  It was surprising to me how much it looked like the country side of Pennsylvania in the USA.

That was most fun.

Rick