Diary of a Wedding Guest: Part 9 - The GPS Strikes Again....Or Does It?

On the way back from Frankenmuth, we decided to stop by Best Buy and purchase an accessory for our GPS system. The accessory was a dashboard friction mount that was on sale until Saturday. This being Friday, we hoped to get one before they were all sold out. The sale price was $14.99 - normally $41.99, so it was a really good deal. Beyond that, don't ask me why we would even consider buying something else for our GPS. We have had nothing but trouble with it. Well, sort of. More like we have had nothing but trouble with the lighthouse custom points of interest file we downloaded for it.

As we were heading back to the hotel in Livonia and decided to visit the local Best Buy store, we had to use the GPS to find the nearest one. The GPS comes with thousands upon thousands of preloaded points of interest such as gas stations, hotels, shopping, etc. Since we did not know the area, we plugged in Best Buy to see what came up. There were three or four Best Buy stores in the area so we chose the closest one. It was about 30 miles away when we first decided to go there.

As we were drawing nearer the location of the first Best Buy (about 4-5 miles away), Lori informs me that the arrival time will be 9:05 PM. I looked at the clock in the car which said 8:41 PM. It didn't sound right that we would only be five miles away, but that it would take almost 25 minutes to get there. We were on the interstate and I suspect that the Best Buy was right of the interstate. Never-the-less, I took the GPS's arrival time as accurate and chose not to stop. The store would close at 9:00 PM and we would arrive five minutes too late.

With that, we opted for the second Besy Buy. The GPS said that it would be 15 miles away. Great, I thought. I can get there just as they are closing, grab the item and checkout in a flash. Lori then informs me that the GPS arrival time is 9:40 PM. WHAT????!!!! Fifteen miles is going to take us an hour????? Something was very wrong.

As we began pondering what a worthless piece of crap the GPS was turning out to be, Lori asked me - Is the arrival time for this destination, or the final destination. We had programmed our hotel as the final destination and the Best Buy was simply a stop along the way.

For those of you that don't know, the arrival time IS to the final destination, meaning that we would have arrived at the original Best Buy (now long past) before they closed and would have had plenty of time to spare. (Passing the original Best Buy on the interstate prompted Lori's question.) At this point, it was now almost 9:00 PM and we would definitely not make it to the second Best Buy before they closed. With that we returned to the hotel intent on trying again another day - excpet the sales would end tomorrow.