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Get Connected to XM Satellite
Are you familair with XM satellite radio? You should be! It may be a well kept secret at this point in time, but not for long!
Between visiting friends and family, going on rock climbing trips, and trying to see the world, I end up going on a lot of road trips. I’ve crisscrossed the country quite a few times, all without any in-car DVD player or sedatives for the passengers. Music has always been important, and my friends and I usually bring all of our CDs along with us in giant folders and binders. Every time a new driver takes over they choose half a dozen different discs and put them somewhere easily accessible so the rest of us can sleep for another few hours. The time usually passes pretty quickly, though eventually the music usually wears thin. Either we get sick of each others’ music or even sick of our own, tired of hearing the same songs or at least the same artists. Every now and then we get adventurous and turn on the radio, though usually we don’t have much luck with stations. If we’re heading through the mountains each station will only be static-free for a few minutes before fading back into fuzz as we wind our way through another pass. The Great Plains aren’t much better, since usually the only stations we can hear clearly play country and western or happen to be fundamentalist Christian talk shows, neither of which go over well with my friends. Major metropolitan areas are a little better, but since we don’t know any of the stations it gets to be tough to wade through what stations are crap and find the select few who play what we like. So what’s the answer to the road trip radio debacle? XM satellite radio seems to be a pretty good bet.
XM satellite radio works basically as the radio version of cable television. For a monthly fee you get access, through your specially-equipped radio, to access a worldwide, satellite-fed radio network. These radio stations are often arranged by genre, and can be heard anywhere across the U.S., even in the mountains. Though there are a few different XM satellite providers, many of them provide you access to the same great radio stations. Not only that, many XM satellite stations are commercial-free, letting you avoid annoying jingles and sometimes even annoying disc jockeys. There are enough stations so everyone should be able to find something to sing along to, making road trips a lot easier than they were before.
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