I've had several occasions to make car trips from Rochester down to the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area recently. The most direct route involves copious time on Route 15. In Pennsylvania, they have a disturbing habit of offering places to turn around. They have more invitations to make a U-turn than they have signs indicating the current route number and direction of travel. I find this incredibly unnerving; I'm on 15 South, but all of the signs I see are for 15 North. I'd much rather have reassurance that I'm on the right road than offers to reverse my trip. This is all the more vexing because they'll list distances to places I've already passed through rather than places I've yet to go. Are there any other similarly signed roads?

You may recall that my suitcase failed to make the connection at O'Hare with me on the way to Harmony College. Would you believe my luggage was misplaced coming as well? This was particularly baffling because ddmerillat's suitcase was routed correctly, and we checked them in at the same time. It was even funnier because we had the same flight number for both legs of the flight, though we had to change planes in Washington National. I've been uneventfully checking my luggage on planes for years. I'm having trouble remembering the last time my luggage was anything other than right where I was, so being forced to wait for it twice on one trip blows my mind. I guess this makes up for those years of error-free luggage handling.

ddmerillat and I flew to Kansas City, Missouri by way of O'Hare today. Unfortunately, a switch of gate assignment at O'Hare meant our luggage didn't join us for the last leg of the trip. Thus, we have some essentials, such as computers, cameras, MP3 players, chargers for all of the above, and music for tomorrow's first Honors Chorus rehearsal. We lack other essentials, though, like toothbrushes, pajamas, antiperspirant, and a change of underwear. D'oh!

More frustrating, we didn't know what address to give the lost luggage office until we got back to campus. When Dave tried to tell the United rep, he was talking to someone who did not exhibit the best communication skills. The rep transcribed "Suite 105" as "Street 105", for instance, which means that in the unlikely event the suitcases reach the campus, they won't go to the right place. Whee!

While driving the New York Thruway this weekend, I saw plenty of Ohio plates and the usual amount of Ontario plates. I was far more surprised by the Arizona and Nebraska. I barely register Pennsylvania plates as unusual at this point, even though the new design wasn't around yet the last time I lived there.

Questions about the distribution of out-of-state plates in the lower forty-eight sprang to mind. Do college students ensure that most states have the full complement of visiting plates during the school year, or is the proportion of people who drive a car great distances to their school too small? Do travelers keep it up year round? How many contiguous states have cars from non-contiguous states visiting? Is there even an effective way to measure such a thing?

Many years ago, I heard someone say the drive from Pittsburgh to Florida was faster than the drive back because it was downhill. This always struck me as improbable. Does a 960-foot change in elevation really matter on a 1,200-mile trip? That's an average grade of 0.015%.

With Buffalo going to the NHL Eastern Conference Finals, co-worker Josie and I were discussing their chances against the yet-to-be-determined Western Conference champs. She said that very few Western Conference games in the regular season are broadcast for East Coast consumption, so it's harder to gauge. She expressed confidence, though, that the Eastern Conference would triumph. From what she'd seen, the Western Conference teams never seem as fast. We mused that it was the satellite delay that makes them seem slower.

For the trip to Geneva this weekend, I was glad to be able to use my cell phone as a navigation system. Admittedly, Geneva is easy to reach from the Thruway, but I liked using the phone to get me back and forth from the hotel to the contest site. It also was able to direct me to somewhere I could grab a bagel and tea in the morning. Driving home tonight, I came up with a few features we aren't like to see any time soon:

Ticket Avoidance Mode

"Watch your speed for the next mile; there's usually a speed trap here."

"Nah, let's go another way."

When the system plots a route you've taken too many times, push a button and shake it up a bit! Maybe it won't be quite as fast, but at least it might be interesting. Or maybe the system should take the initiative, which would give us:

Spontaneous Rerouting

Yes, yes, drivers can do this already by disobeying the directions, but just once I want it to say "No, I changed my mind. Take the next left."

Cinematic Chase Mode

Your route is planned for maximum air time and proximity to fruit carts. Your trip is updated in real time based on satellite pictures of plate-glass windows being transported by workers on foot. (Activates automatically for all trips through San Francisco?)

Mild weather en route,
only moderate traffic,
makes for a nice trip.

Uneventful drive.
For the first time in nine days,
back in my own home.

Microwaved dinner,
watched a big batch of TiVo.
Time to hit the net.

Some day I must drive
Interstate Five-Seven-Five
just to say I did.

Saturday night, Barbershop Steve called to ask if I wanted to grab ddmerillat and head over to his new pad to do some singing. He had a baritone in mind that was willing to make the drive. "Where's your new place?" "Orchard Park". Not having any idea where Orchard Park was, I mused that we'd have to hold off until we know whether or not the show we had tickets for was catastrophically overbooked or not. The drive to Orchard Park turned out to be almost two hours, so that wasn't going to work. I suggested Sunday afternoon.

Anticipating a drive to parts unknown, I downloaded VZ Navigator to my cell phone. This is Verizon's attempt to provide turn-by-turn directions via cell phone. It's $10 for a month, $3 for a day. I decided to splurge for the $3 option, but discovered that it offered a one-day free trial. Woo hoo! I did a search for Steve's place and got familiar with the interface. The new plan was ddmerillat driving while I navigated. We stopped in LeRoy to pick up Dennis.

( In depth breakdown of the software's behavior on the trip. )

In the end, I'd say it's a reasonable facsimile of a navigation system. $10 would be extremely worthwhile for a multi-day road trip into unfamiliar territory.

Pennsylvania renumbered all of their highway exits a few years ago. The exit numbers now correspond to mile markers. On long highways like I-79, that makes them a lot more sparse. I can rarely remember the mileage exit numbers, though. I-90 is either near 160 or 180. I-76 is either near 70 or 80. This weekend, I think I noticed funny properties that will make it easier to remember. To go from I-79 to I-76, get off at 77, which is conveniently close to 76. To go from I-79 to I-90, it's almost 180, which is double 90.

You may recall curiosity almost killing this cat in December—the rest area that wasn't as open as the signs implied. Well, it's open now, and I stopped in last night. I was excited to see what lessons Pennsylvania had learned over the decades about rest areas and how they might be improved. The key innovation I noticed was the bifurcated bathrooms. Men and women each have two bathrooms now, but they're subtle about it. It's one of those designs where you go through a doorway and then immediately around a wall. In this case, though, turning left and turning right to get around the wall yield different bathrooms. This lets them close one half for cleaning without cutting off the supply of stalls completely. Now that's good redundancy! In a surprising departure from utility, each half of the men's room only had one hand dryer and one paper towel dispenser. Worst of all, the hand dryer is blocked if anyone's standing at the leftmost sink. Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, PennDOT!