I Saw Something Cool

Yesterday on my drive home from work through the back roads of America, I saw something really cool that I’d never seen before.

I was in Wayland, MA (I think. I might have still been in Framingham) and a car did a really stupid U-turn in front of me. It left the westbound lane of route 126 and turned around into the eastbound lane, which was stopped at an intersection. It was a little car, I didn’t catch the make or model, and it had a very strange looking, very tall contraption rigged up on the roof.

My first thought was, what the hell is that? My second thought was, I wonder if… My third thought was, That’s gotta be a Google Street View camera car! As it took it’s U-Turn I could see Google Street View painted on the side. Cool! I had never seen one of those puppies before. I was on the phone with my wife at the time, so a picture was not practical. It didn’t matter though, it ducked down a side street as soon as the traffic started moving. It was only in front of me for about 10 seconds.

Now when folks marvel at how Google gets the street view images, I can tell them I know all about it. There’s a big tall rig with a 365 degree camera set up on top of it and it just drives up and down the street snapping pics as it goes.

An even more amazing traffic occurrence happened this morning. I took the shortest root available to me for my drive in to work and it took less than an hour. 93S to 128S to 90W. I don’t know what possessed me not to take the longer, yet generally faster, way in to the office, but it worked out for me today. Granted two weeks from now when school starts up again the root I took today will be gridlock all the way. Oh, and did I mention we’re moving to a new building soon and my long way around will no longer be possible, and I will be stuck with essentially the root I took today? Yippee.