Note to self: If you ever go boatiing with mudjunkie, DO NOT put him in charge of navigation....lol

 

ZXI've ridden the "high speed" trains in Europe....nutin as fast as that...way cool. Do they make you wear seatbelts?Do they have a restaurant car that you can hang in? How's the ride...smooth or not?

 

No belts required. They've even went to no smoking sections, which is was a surprise to me (big step for Japanese train culture). There is nowa short sectionof the magnetically levitated testrail in Japan. I forget which two points it runs between, but currently that is supposed to be the world'sfastest rail...the European TGV (is thatright?) is currently the fastest in daily use and recorded a top speed just slightly slower that of the Japanese maglev. There's a plan to run the fast version of the maglev between Tokyo and Osaka in place of the current shinkansen line that runs between those points, but is will cost major bucks, so I don't see it happening any time soon.

 

Dean's correct they now have smoking and non-smoking cars, one line is completely no-smoking and the rest are rumored to follow within a year.
Years ago there were restaurant cars but they now have young flight attendants that push a cart full of goodies, drinks and lunch (bento) box's thru the isles on about 20 minute intervals.
The newer train sets are smoother, quieter and substantially more comfortable then an airliner. Another pleasantry is that talking on a cell phone is forbidden in the car, you must get up and go to an area between the cars where the restrooms are located to use your phone, in general cell phone users in Japan are much more discrete then in the U.S.

 

So who's up for a ride up in the Great White North? I'll lead the way!

 

I have the explorist 500. magellan. It's pretty good for what I use it for. SOoo much you can do with it, but I pretty well just use simple basic stuff on it.
I got mapsend TOPO Canada for it, and it amazes me the roads that are mapped on it. I don't understand how.. Some are barely walking trails.. Only new roads and trails arn't on it.
It will track my positions of course
I can do things like backtrack, and set if I want it to let me know if I am going off track and how far.
It will save geocaches in it for doing geocacheing (huh, duhhh!)... I did that once and it was neat
It's got a color screen.
I got the extra space I think 2Gb card for it, so I can basically save all of canada on it.
It will do that same thing where I save a track, then bring it up on my mapsend program and it will play my track, along with show my elevation
One thing I wish I had though, was the explorist XL instead. I alwayse find the small screen on the 500 is not big enough and I do alot of scrolling because the farther out the zoom, the less details you see.

 

A bit of work but the result works well for me.

 

They should have a massive maglev train running from washington DC to the friggin moon.........we could stuff 400 morons at a shot and send them off at 325 mph.......[:@] .......
At least you guys have these things in your country....it would take at least 73 years to build them here with all the BS crap we all need to be put thru.OOOOHHHHhhh we have an almighty AMTRAK missile sharing a freight line that Norfolk Southern owns......That's pretty cool that the freight train company owns all the tracks and controls the high speed lines for the eastern seaboard.....[8D]

 

<Dumb GPS question> I never had one so I need to know...Is there any fees other than the initial cost of the unit and the maps or once you have that the satellite use is free?
</Dumb GPS question>

Thanks,
db

 

Nope, its free, unless you want to buy more detailed address and other maps. But as far as the GPS right out of the box it will show roads, and streets, lakes and pretty much everything you need. No fees.