Dave’s Trip To The Dairy Farm – Part 1: How Google Maps saved my ass last week…

                                                                                                                                     
So I believe you all know by now I took off last Friday to go see my buddy Tod out at his dairy farm which is his place of employment but getting there was a bit of a challenge.

In this first part of the story I describe how technology saved my collective hide last week so that I would be able to tell you all about this amazing dairy farm that is doing something that I had not only never seen but never even heard of and that was how this dairy farm is using the “excess” from their cows to create a clean, renewable energy source that right now runs 50 to 60% of their dairy farm.

 As with a lot of GPS systems while I find that 95% of the time they work really well there are those times where they don't and last Friday happen to be one of those times (GPS = Global Piece Of S***!)

When Tod originally sent me the address I thought it would take me no more than an hour to get there and boy was I wrong! As I was about to get ready to leave I punched the address Tod had sent me into Google maps and what I thought was going to take about an hour is going to end up taking over two hours and then I looked at the clock on the wall in my office and I had exactly 2 hours to get there.

Now let me set the stage for you... After Google maps for me that it was going to take me over two hours to get there I had:

-          I had not shaved

-          I had not showered

-          I smelled like old man

-          and I had very few clean clothes to utilize at that time (I'm not a huge fan of laundry)

-          the car had a quarter tank of gas and…

-          the GPS had not been updated in about six months.

So I e-mailed Todd back real quick stating I might be about 15 min. late and I run upstairs, take a quick shower, threw on what I think were clean clothes (they smelled clean), grabbed my keys, my camera, and my wallet, jumped in the Mustang and headed out the door. Oh wait, before I left I also kissed my wife.

So I pull a car out into the driveway and I put the GPS up and I try to punch the address in but the stupid thing kept telling me the address did not exist (this is how far I was going where the GPS was actually telling me that address did not exist. I was just hoping they had roads where I was going!)

I was getting flustered and before I threw it out the window I decided to run back inside and check Google maps one more time just to make sure I was not losing my mind. Sure enough I punch in the address that Todd gave me and while Google maps gave me the crossroads correctly the GPS could not.

So I limp back to my car and lo and behold I am now going to be 20 min. late and there is no way I am going to make the 12 o'clock arrival time. I text Todd and tell him I'm going to be about 20 min. late, put the car in gear and pray for the best. Then I looked at my phone and thought “you know Dustin told me that the GPS on his phone was really good I'll just try it on mine and if it get me close I'll be happy!”

So I pull into the gas station to get some gas and after I had filled up (am I the only one that needs to take out a small business loan just to fill up my tank?) punched up Google maps on my droid incredible, log into my Google account, and lo and behold there was the address that I had put into Google maps just minutes earlier. I select the address, and told it to go! Once I did that it fired up a little application on my droid incredible called “navigation”. I was instructed that it was still beta and asked if I wanted to proceed and at this point in time I had no other option so I said "sure". So here I sit in my very nice Mustang, about to head out to a place I have never been before, relying solely on Verizon and a beta “navigation application” on my droid incredible. What can go wrong?

I head out onto the freeway and I'm here to tell you not once did I get lost, have to ask directions, nothing. As a matter of fact it was faster and quicker than my GPS normally is and I love the fact that I just had to simply glance down at it and at the very top of my screen I was shown how far the next turn was in both miles and feet and at the very bottom of the screen was a very good approximation of when I was going to get there.

Now for those of you who have not seen my Mustang well… Thankfuly I have not got a ticket yet (knock on wood, bang cans together, sacrifice Oreo cookies to the gods, whatever it takes to keep me out of driving court ). For the most part, I'm not a reckless driver at all but I had people waiting for me as this was my very first interview for any of the websites I ever run so I wanted to make sure I was as close as possible to the time I was supposed to be there so I'm settling in on the gas pedal pretty good (but not crazy fast in case any police officers- who I love by the way-are reading this) and down the road I a-go!

An hour and a half later I am so far inland I swear I saw Gilligan and the Skipper on the side of the road (if you don't get that joke ask your parents ) basically I'm in the middle of nowhere with the only thing I could see that resembled civilization was the tallest cell phone tower I have ever seen in my life I happened to glance down at my radio which also has a compass and a thermometer built into it and outside it was 103° (I almost got out of the picture of it but again it was 103° outside screw that!). So I have the air conditioner on, cruising down this two-lane highway at some points like a bat out of hell (I admit that Mr. police officer…sir…or ma’am but there were no other cars around except for this… Well I get you in the next sentence…) and I get behind a truck that flings a rock at my brand spanking new windshield at what must have been the speed of light as it put a nice pockmark right in my windshield which later was fixed by the stellar folks over at SafeLite. You guys rock!

Anyway I finally get inland to point to where it's almost scary because there's not a gas station to be found, I don't see a lot of birds, and there are no cars but I did see a couple of very large trucks, and did I mention it was 103° outside so I'm really relying on my phone to get me there as my GPS was useless.

So, there I am in my nice little Mustang cruising around in the middle of nowhere on one of the hottest days of the year praying that Verizon and Google knew where I was and could get me to Tod’s place without running out of gas or having a tire popped (the windshield was already screwed I was not willing to give up one of my tires).

So, I make the final right turn onto this desolate road and as I start to drive I noticed there is not one other car on the road. As a matter of fact I'm pretty sure until I got almost to the dairy farm itself I really didn't see any cars on the road at all (the thought crossed my mind that I was so far out there even if something happened AAA would need to be able to find me.)

So I get to the final right turn right before this beautiful , huge driveway. I rolled down my window and sure enough the smell of cow shit everywhere let me know I had arrived... at a dairy farm...and I was assuming it was the one I was trying to get to. I'm telling you I have never in my life enjoyed a whiff of cow shit until that day. I drove down this gorgeous driveway right to the dairy farm. I got my car and knew I had arrived thanks to the folks at Verizon and Google.

(Below are a couple of pictures of the actual corporate offices for Joseph Farms Dairy. I had the pleasure of going in there and it really did remind me of this fantastic old plantation house. I do want to point out the antennas on top of the house as this farm covers a tremendous amount of acreage and they have a sister farm about 6 miles away and as you can see they rely very heavily on, what I like to call Point-2-Point wireless, where the transmitting antenna in the receiving antenna need to be able to see each other. I'm going to put in the article next week a great story about how Tod asked for one of the trees that was blocking some of the data from getting through to the other antenna to be trimmed and the next thing he knew they cut the whole thing down!)

• Click to open image! Click to open image!
• Click to open image! Click to open image!
•  

So the moral of the story… Screw the GPS you’re already paying for your phone might as well use it!!!

In all honesty it was really surprising to me at how well the phone worked as a driving, GPS, navigation thingy…. not much impresses these days but that really did.

So in the future if you're in a pinch remember Google is your friend.

I should have part two available later next week if I can get all of the approvals done quickly ( like I said before, I want to make sure everyone who took time out of their very busy day to show me this amazing dairy farm and this amazing technology has their say in the article.)

Later - Dave