My friend Steve has started calling me gadget girl...
It seems a bit odd to be taking high tech toys on a biking trip, but that is exactly what I am doing! I kept a journal with pen and paper on my previous trips, but what I really wanted to do was to write the journal on a computer - especially since I type much faster than I write. I've been looking at handheld computers ever since my first self-contained trip in 1998, and I finally decided to buy one. My first gadget, purchased with bike trips in mind, is an HP Jornada 720 handheld computer. It has a full keyboard, and although it is small I can manage to touch-type on it. And it has what is referred to as a half-size (color) screen. Half of what, I don't know - it's small, but it works! It runs Windows 2000 for Handheld PC (which used to be called Windows CE), and includes pocket versions of Office. I can connect to the Internet, so I should be able to update my journal and check email from the road. I'm looking forward to being able to stay in touch with folks while I'm on my trek across the United States. I'm taking an extra battery with me too. The batteries are supposed to last for 9 hours, but of course that depends on how bright the display is set. I can use it on a dim setting indoors, but for outside use it will probably need to be set to bright.
I always like to capture my trip on film, but this time I just couldn't begin to think about juggling all of the rolls of film I would need for a trip of this length, to say nothing of the processing costs. Luckily I started looking at digital cameras a couple of months ago, so I wasn't starting from scratch on my research. I decided I wanted at least a 3 megapixel camera, and it had to be small. I like to ride with my camera in a very small fanny pack. That way I can easily stop to take pictures without getting off of the bike. Stop, foot down, camera out, shoot... I decided on the Canon S40, which is a 4 megapixel camera. My timing was good on this one, because there was a $100 price drop on the camera right about when I was ready to buy. I also found a 10% off coupon, so I'm very happy with the price. The camera showed up last Friday, and I've been experimenting with it ever since. The pictures it takes look great - I can't wait to use it on the road. And this is another device that I decided needs a spare battery - so two batteries for the camera are traveling with me.
What next? Well, I have no idea how many pictures I'll take on this trip. I took 250 pictures on my one-month Rocky Mountain bike trip back in 1998. This is a 3-month trip, so will I take 3 times that, or more? My guess is more, based on conversations with others who have made the switch to digital cameras. Since I won't need to pay to process every picture, it seems that it will be easy to take more pictures than I have in the past. I'm not taking my "real" computer with me, just my Jornada, which can't be used to store pictures since it runs on memory, with the only available storage the same as the camera - Compact Flash cards. It also has a PCMCIA card slot and a Smart Card slot, but again it's not feasible to store a summer's worth of pictures there. How many Compact Flash cards will I need to take with me to handle the possible large number of pictures that I'll take? I just couldn't figure that out. My first thought was to stop at places that have digital photo processing (am I really going to see any of these places?) and have the pictures pulled off of the Compact Flash cards and put on CDs, but I decided that I don't want that constraint either, so I've ordered a MindStor 5gb drive. My friend Bruce told me about the digital wallet, and the MindStor is the next generation digital wallet - the original doesn't seem to be sold any more. I still wasn't sure about it, but last week I spoke to Mark Goehring about it. He did the Transamerica route last summer - see www.pedal2pardise.com for his trip journal - and used a digital wallet to store his pictures. He confirmed that the device definitely was a good solution to this problem. Our conversation helped me to decide to go with the extra gadget! The MindStor is pretty small too, and if I shoot at 4 megapixels I will be able to fit over 4000 pictures on it. OK, OK, I really don't think I'll come anywhere close to 4000 pictures.
Unfortunately, the manufacturer of my digital wallet is no longer in business. But as I move this journal to its new home in 2009, the world has changed... flash cards have come down in price, so it might be reasonable to carry enough media for the entire trip. More and more people are traveling with laptop computers. And stores may be available along the way to burn your precious photos onto CDs or DVDs.
I've also finally given in and purchased a cell phone. Unlike my first trip in 1998 where there was little or no cell phone coverage, the route I'm following should have cell coverage for a good portion of it. Just one more gadget that needs to be charged, but I plan to leave the phone powered off except when I am using it for outbound calls. That should help some.
Of course, all of these devices only run on proprietary rechargeable batteries, and they all use their own chargers. So I'm going from not taking anything electronic on my bike trips to carrying a bunch of gadgets and a bunch of chargers. Guess that's the way it will be, since I want to have my playthings with me! I did figure out that a couple of the cables / cords were duplicates. The camera and the MindStor have the same connection type from the device to a USB port on a computer, so I'm only going to include one cable. And the cord from the electric outlet to the charger for the MindStor and the Jornada is identical, so I'll only bring one cord. That means that I can't charge the Jornada and the MindStor at the same time, but I think I can live with that, especially since I have 2 batteries for the Jornada. (I also have 2 batteries for the camera.) Here's hoping I have access to power and phone lines every so often on my trip. I'm hoping at least once a week...
Of course, there's another price to pay for my electronic gadgets - extra weight. I packed my electronic toys and their recharges, cords, and cables in a padded "cell", and then weighed it - 5 pounds! Oh well, as I said before - I want all of these devices so I'll have to live with the weight!
