This sweepstakes is now closed. Random winner is… 40.
Back in the old days before GPS doohickies were commonplace, I got lost All.The.Time. Before meeting my husband, I used to call Whitney’s husband to navigate me out of mysterious neighborhoods and lead me back to safety. Getting married meant that part of Alec’s new job description was mission-control from home whenever I was lost. Love that guy!
What’s worse than being lost and late in the rain? Being lost, late, in the rain with a baby in the car! Am I right? Thanks to having a navigational GPS in the car, those calls of “help! I’m lost again!” are fewer and fewer.
Want to win?! The good folks at TomTom are offering our readers a choice of their XL 350 TM personal navigation device (pictured above) OR a TomTom App for iPhone & corresponding car mounting kit. You choose.
Tell us about a time you wish you had a TomTom in your life in the comments below. U.S. residents only. We’ll close comments on Dec. 15.
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Disclosure: I learned about the new model TomTom recently and was given one to test drive as well as one to share with you.
i wish i had the time i took my son and my brother to the georgia aquarium. OMG! that city is SO NOT organized! who planned those streets. i had to problem getting there. but it took us an hour to get back to the interstate. apparently the signs mean NOTHING in that city! stupid atlanta!
Anytime I visit a new city, a Tom Tom would be helpful!
Anytime I go somewhere new, a GPS would be helpful. Especially when I am the only adult.
I really wish I had this when I was driving home alone from my in-laws after Thanksgiving with my 2 kids (2.5 and 7 mo.) I hit a TON of traffic and tried to get off the highway and figure out a back way home and got so lost. It took forever to get home. My baby was crying and my toddler kept yelling “Have to go pee!” What a nightmare.
I once got diverted off of I-95 due to an accident somewhere between Philly and DC in post-holiday traffic with no map in the car. I could tell that the guy in front of me had a GPS so followed him, hoping he was going to DC as well. We did get back, but I pretty much always wish for a TomTom around Washington but have yet to get one.
Sign me up! I’m always lost!
Actually, last weekend. I was taking my toddler to his first movie and we were running late, and I couldn’t find the theater. By the time we got there we had missed our opportunity and had to wait for the next showing an hour later.
Being new to the bay area, there is at least one day a week that I wish I had one!!!!
I wish I had a TomTom every time I’ve just arrived in a new city. Sometimes I can’t even find the street signs! It does make it a fun adventure though
I would have loved a Tom-Tom when I drove from Kansas to Arizona a few months ago!
Lost in a bad part of a not-so-safe town at dusk. Not even sure how I ended up there, but I sure could have used a GPS to get me out of the situation quickly.
I usually only stick to routes I know, because when I try new ones, things can get… scary. Like the time I had to divert through VT and got totally lost, think I drove the entire state before finding my way back to where I should have been in the first place!
OMG! THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY TIMES, BUT THE MOST MEMORABLE WAS WHEN I WAS WITH MY SON; WE GOT LOST IN A SEEDY AREA, AND HE, MY SON, GOT US OUT BY BEING GEOGRAPHICALLY GIFTED. I HAVE NO SENSE OF DIRECTION, SO I NEED THIS. THANKS!
Driving over 100 miles the WRONG way on a road trip. oh, Tom Tom where were you then?!
When I moved to Orlando after college it would have been oh so helpful as I continually found myself in the not so tourist friendly area. Eventually I figured it out, but a Tom Tom would have been awesome!
I really wished I had one about 99% of the time I’m driving around — I live in a big city!
I wish I had one when we moved to San Diego after living in a small town most of our lives. After we arrived, we were habitually lost! This would have been so handy!
oh my goodness – what i would give to know where i am going! even when she is sleeping – just to have the peace of mind not to stress out in los angeles traffic … oh santa please!
I get lost on a daily basis!! This would be a lifesaver with two kids in the car.
I tried to take several kids to a local popsicle shop, but couldn’t find it. They all started to get really disappointed, and I had to call up 2 different people to try to find it. A TomTom would have been very helpful!
Oh my. Can I instead tell you about a time I wish someone else had a TomTom in the car? Like the time that my family from a much smaller town came to my wedding in Chicago, and stayed at a hotel in a suburb, and got lost on the way back to the hotel from my rehearsal dinner? I spent HOURS on the phone with them trying to help them get back to their hotel, but they didn’t even know which suburb they were in, and they were too scared to stop and ask directions, and the only way I could help was to mapquest on my sloooooow dial-up computer but they kept moving so whenever I could get some idea of where they were, they would already be in a different place. ON THE NIGHT BEFORE MY WEDDING. TomTom would have been lovely.
I drove my mom to her major pre-op doctor’s appointment in San Francisco from Sacramento, took a wrong turn a block from the hospital, and well, the story ends with yelling and crying and a migraine with hypoglycemic angsty-ness. Mom made it to her appointment on time – barely – and I spent an hour sobbing in the car in the parking structure. A mom who could read a map would have been helpful. A friendly computer showing me where to go would have been brilliant.
OMG, back when I was a child my dad swore he knew how to get somewhere without maps and without help. No sweat. Well, we were visiting Oregon and he was driving and he got off the wrong exit. And we kept driving and driving up into the mountains. With every turn we took I got sicker and sicker. My face was green and my mom was frantically looking for a plastic bag for my anticipated throw up.. when my dad decided to stop to ask for directions. Anyway, we ended up having to turn around and drive back down the mountain another 20 minutes. AHA TOM TOM where were you then?
Ugh – had to drop someone off after a friend’s wedding this past summer, and then had to find our way back to our hotel. 2 AM, in an unknown city, and we run out of gas. The first gas station we could find was CLOSED. Cue panic attack in the car by both my husband AND myself – never good. A GPS would’ve been so helpful…
I wish I had a TomTom every time I travel farther than 4 miles from my house!
omg i get so hopelessly lost. my city (pittsburgh) is on many different horizontal levels, so i’ll often find myself driving under a bridge i’m supposed to be crossing, or on the wrong side of the wrong river. i could definitely use a tomtom to make my life better!
We love to go on adventures to new places all the time, and a Tom Tom would be AMAZING!!!
I’d love one for safety. I love the gps feature on my iphone and that seems to work great when I’m in the navigator seat. But, when it’s just the toddler and myself, I cannot safely use the iphone gps/maps feature. I’ve been a passenger in a few cars recently with a Tom-Tom and I couldn’t believe how well it navigated around traffic snarls!
Me and my too little E’s (Elvis 2.5 yrs & Enzo 8 mo) were on our way to meet my mom’s group for a camping trip in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Being the only adult in the car, I was pretty much in charge of finding the way. After having prepared and packed the car full of our gear and already having stopped a couple of times for a hungry baby and to handle a pee incident, I was tired and while I love my iPhone, it just wasn’t helping out enough. I must have turned around at least three times – and then I had to wing it when I lost reception. We found our way eventually but I had to fake it every time Elvis asked if were lost again.
in pittsburgh, pa. need i say more? well how about moving from the midwest with a large u-haul to this city with narrow (and i’ll say, a confusing) road system. you try backing a 24 foot truck down a steep, under-construction, incline only to find out you’re on the wrong road!
We get lost every single time we go to the zoo. There is a place that we don’t specify what direction we are supposed to turn so we will inevitably get in the wrong lane, then turn the wrong way.
I would love to have a TomTom just about every time I go to San Francisco. The one-way streets, the traffic and general chaos have made for many harrowing experiences. The most infamous, I was in a hurry on a Friday afternoon during the rush and became hopelessly stuck going round and round one-way street blocks, unable to work out how to get just a few blocks over to where I had to be! In amongst all that I was on some of the super hilly streets which led to some hairy hill starts in my little stick shift car. In the end I found my way, but only with help from my iphone and google maps which is NOT easy to use while driving (I pulled over). A TomTom would have been wonderful!
I would love to win this for my friend. I’ve known her since we were 12 (so a long time
and she has always had/still has a bad sense of direction. The funniest time was when she got lost going to a friends house that she had been to many times before…which was located 4 blocks from where she was!!! I’m still puzzled on how she managed that one. LOL.
I wish I had a tom-tom every time that i’m stuck in traffic in an area I don’t know well. I’d love to navigate around those roadblocks!
Oh my goodness, there are so many times I wish I had a Tom Tom to keep me on track. I could have used one my first weeks at my job, before I knew multiple ways to get there. I was always so nervous if there was a traffic jam!
I get lost all the time! The one time I wish I had a GPS was back in college when I got lost on a back road in NJ and had to call my boyfriend crying and try to describe to him where I was. A cop saw my erratic driving and pulled me over! When he saw I was crying and lost I think he felt bad. I did end up figuring out where I was but what a mess!
always…we just moved to a new city and I can’t find anything without driving past it atleast twice….ugh.
I need this for my husband, who often excuses his tardiness with, “I got lost.” No more excuses.
When I went to a wedding in Alabama I stayed with my friends and their 4 month old. When me and my 10 month old were driving around, husband free, I was thankful that they leant me their GPS. Being lost with a screaming baby makes mom want to scream too, or just cry. I was thankful to have a guide telling me directions on my way.
wow – as the navigator in the family, this would be great!! my husband – and driver – would actually believe me using this and we can avoid having to turn around and getting lost!!! awesome
when we first moved to the phoenix valley i was terrified to go anywhere! it is SO big and confusing. eventually i got an iphone, so i don’t have to worry about getting lost anymore, but it would be great (and much safer!) to have something like this for my car!
Honestly, after having a baby, my sense of direction has been lost completely. There were a few times in the past year where I was driving around in circles and wasted over an hour trying to figure out where I was and how to find my destination.
My hubby is super navigator, so whenever he’s driving, we’re pretty much set. I, on the other hand, get lost all the time–even in our own town! I would love to have a GPS to guide me to all the garage sales I hit on the weekends.
do they have one of these that will find a parking spot in the city for you? i could use one of those!
I wish I had had a Tomtom when I was driving back from the mall. I totally missed my exit because I was chatting with my friend in the car, and ended up in downtown DC all of a sudden! Since the beltway goes all the way around the city, I just turned around and went the other way ’til I found the beltway, but it would have been nice not to miss the exit in the first place! Also, it would be nice to know where I am if something happens to the car while heading to my parents house alone with my son!
Every time we move, I spend about two months getting lost before learning where everything else is. I’m still in that two month period right now!
I could get lost going around a block, oh wait thats happened before. I need a GPS for anything.
I wish I had a TomTom when I go to Tilden Park! Especially when my kids keep asking, “Are we there yet? Where are the animals?” I don’t know why, but I get lost in there every. single. time.
A TomTom would come in handy any time I visit the Boston area to outsmart the octopi highways and one-way city streets.
I had recently moved to Boston, famous for the non-grid-like street layout I was used to in the Midwest. I got lost and called my sister, in grad school at Harvard. She was in front of her computer and pulled up a map of where I was. Well, needless to say, once the directions started to sound like, “go up about 1.5 inches” I knew I had to figure out a new way to navigate Boston!
I was driving from GA to PA to visit family using directions I printed of mapquest, but there was a road work and we were detoured and it took hours to find a way back to where I needed to be. I had to stop a multiple gas stations and ask for directions!