Drive and Listen
 

I, too, have found something lovely. This is the work of a German student, Erkam, and I thank him for it (I even "bought him a coffee").

This is me, driving all over the world in the car I never had, totally in control. I can turn off the radio, turn on the ambient street sound, slow the car down and gawp at the view.

Join me?

https://driveandlisten.herokuapp.com...3tOd_BMupKvdTs

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This is going to take me to my muse, this one. Thanks for the ride.

It's an always enjoyable phenomenon to have things coalescing around certain subjects, as they are here on the Sphere lately. In this case, the links to radio stations playing around the world, the driving experience of this link of being in a capsule called a "car/auto" and driving through the streets of the world, and Mark's "Real Quiet" poem on Met that both tugs at and resists them (radio, car, world).


I have always loved navigating Google Earth. In some places you can actually zoom in to street level and use your mouse/touch pad to navigate the streets in a kind of drunken stop-start-lurching kind of way. Here in Boston and environs I've seen the Google cars driving the streets with an eyeball camera perched on the roof of the car filming the street level view. It's an eerie sight to see.

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It hurts my heart.*

*In a good way.

That's pretty neat, Annie. Thanks.

I am glad some other people like this, too. It takes me to places without overstepping the boundaries of propriety. It shows me enough, but not too much.

Jim, I share your interest in Google Earth, but I have mixed feelings about Street View. For a long time my little cul-de-sac has been accessible in that medium, but it has recently been updated, presumably with better cameras, and now Google peers into my living room window. I find this a bit unsettling, to say the least. But then, things (as you say) coalesce, and my own "Boat" poem more or less forgives them. Like Martin Luther, they could do no other.

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Ha! Ahoy!
I've never been the kind of person to look into windows from the outside. Looking out of windows from the inside, yes — I do that all the time. I think I'll go do that now : )
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When Google first started showing the street view perspective, I used it intensively trying to plan a ski holiday for friends and family. I would look for hotels that were within easy walking distance of the piste or lifts. Sometimes I would begin at the lift and walk around looking for likely hotels and then track them down on their websites. I spent a ridiculous amount of time getting to know places and it got to the point where I came across certain characters so often that I felt that I could call them nodding acquaintances. My memory of these virtual trips is so ingrained that I now have difficulty remembering whether I have actually been to a place or just visited virtually. Maybe there’s a poem in there?

I do hope so, Joe! :)
(It's like when you have such a vivid dream that you find yourself wondering "did that really happen?".)

Annie,
What a splendid find. It's definitely the best way to travel!
Thanks for bringing this to us.

Jayne