The Worst Navigators (i.e. us)

I don't know what it is, but our team seems to have extreme fail when it comes to navigation between clue sites in the Game. This became painfully clear during the Ghost Patrol playtest when, on more than one occasion, we left clue sites before other teams and arrived at the next one after them. In one specific incident, the next site was five minutes away and it took us over twenty minutes to get there.

Obviously, we'd like to solve this problem. We thought that springing for GPS when renting a van would help, but it has its own share of difficulties. For example, we got stuck on a Stanford street that someone had decided to put poles in the middle of during Midnight Madness and just recently it thought we were on a freeway just because we were driving alongside it.

(Shinteki Eric also brought his GPS unit for the GP playtest, so on more than one occasion, we had Eddie Izzard telling us to go right, while the standard GPS voice said left.)

Parking is part of the problem, too, especially during the Ghost Patrol playtest. Why? Well, we had been expecting our six player team plus a member of GC to ride along and so figured a mini-van would be too cramped. The next largest size that we could locate, oddly enough, was a 15-seat passenger van. Finding parking with a van that size is a challenge in its own right, especially if the garage has a low ceiling.

(It turned out we would have been fine with a mini-van: One of our members injured her back and couldn't make it, while another decided that there was enough time to attend a kegger in San Diego the night before the playtest.)

I'm really not sure how to improve our navigation. Having a teammate more familiar with the Bay Area? I basically only know Santa Rosa and the freeways to get to airports. Letting teammates out to pick up puzzles at clue sites instead of driving around for five or ten minutes looking for parking? Hiring a chauffeur?

The only plausible thing I can think of is instead of piling into the van and heading out after the solve (something we did once in No More Secrets before even getting our next site location), we should take a few minutes and have a clear idea of where we're going, maybe even on a physical map. I don't know, but this problem is definitely keeping us from being competitive.