OK, little Vanagon content, perhaps, but it is Friday. My 2010 PT Cruiser has a digital compass display on the dash. A somewhat useless feature I always thought-until this past Wednesday. Driving home in the snowstorm that hit the mid Atlantic region Wednesday, when I got to Leesburg Virginia I decided to bail off the main route and take a back road. That route came to a dead stop about 1/2 miles outside Leesburg. There was no turning around. Off to my left was a road I had never been on before. Loudoun County Virginia still has many miles of gravel and/or dirt roads. I am one who just cannot sit still in traffic. I took the left turn onto the road. I ended up so far off the beaten path I had no clue where I was. It got dark and it was snowing like mad ( a "thunder snow" where you actually have lightning and thunder while its snowing). Visibility was next to nothing. I was coming to intersections with roads I had never heard of. I had not seen another car since I bailed on this back road. The ONLY way I had a clue as to which way to go was that compass. As long as I was going west or northwest I knew I was OK.  The snow was now 5 or 6 inches deep. I finally came back onto the road I had bailed from, but 6 or 7 miles to the west of where I left it. There were no other cars in sight. I continued to head home, getting there by 6:00pm. It was around 5:00 when I took my unknown shortcut. I found out later the two roads I could have taken out of Leesburg, including the one i was on where shut down. It took others 7 or more hours to get home, and some didn't, choosing to turn around and find a hotel room. I am now a firm believer in that compass!! I hadn't used one since I got my advanced underwater dive certification about 19 years ago. I'll now have one in every car I own! . BTW, the PT is a company car.   Jeff 

Jeff Stewart