On the Road: Do Not Disturb

English: iphone  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I am on the road, people like to call and check up on me. I am grateful for the concern, but I will not talk on the cell phone while I am driving through a city or through a tricky section of road. However, I am happy to talk to people when I am driving on a straight stretch. Although I have people who know the sections of the interstate I will be driving for the day, no one ever really knows when I stop for a rest or knows where I am at any given time. Most people do not know what time zone I am in and calls can come at an inopportune time. While communication comes because people are concerned, the calls can disturb my sleep if I stop early to get some sleep.

This situation has happened to me in the past, but not on my recent trips. Now I have the iPhone that has a "Do Not Disturb" feature which I was able to utilize on recent trips. I can set my phone to block calls for a certain length of time, but people who are listed in the Favorites section of my contact list will still have their calls sent through to ring. I made sure to have only my daughter in this section, so her calls or texts will always get through to me.  All other texts and calls will be displayed when I turn off the "Do Not Disturb" feature. For example, someone I knew sent me birthday wishes from Akron at just before 7:00 in the morning East Coast time. My phone received that message at 3:55 Pacific Time, but the text did not wake me because I had the "Do Not Disturb" feature activated.

While on the subject of the iPhone, I was able to take advantage of a great feature. On past trips I had to rely on someone to keep me informed about the weather. I do not text and drive nor do I try to read the screen of my phone while I am driving. I do that for safety reasons, but also because I am incapable of performing those two functions at once. With this phone all I had to do was press one button and ask, "Siri, what is the weather in St. Louis?" Siri told me what the weather conditions were. This was so great and really added to the safety of the trip. When I am traveling alone, I do not have another person to find information for me. Now I have Siri to serve as a valuable assistant.

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