On the Road

An interesting (maybe) little tidbit from everyday life that speaks to the power of today's technology.

At the moment my wife is driving from the Twin Cities to Chicago to pick up two of our kids from college/grad school. She just phoned from her cell (I didn't ask her whether she was driving or had pulled over; I hope she pulled over) asking me what the weather looked like on towards Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago. I was working at the computer anyway, so I quick pulled up some animated radar reports and was able to give her a sense of what the conditions would be like as she drives farther to the southeast. I could have pulled up local weather reports for those cities as well (I may still do that and text them to her), but in any event it was nice to be able to give her some real-time information on what the roads and weather looked like ahead of her. Sure beats the old days when we'd phone the state patrol to get a sense of weather/road conditions. Maybe I'll check out the Wisconsin Dept. of Transportation as well and give her a heads up on any road construction she might come across.