A Blog about Blogsy on Blogger

T-14

A blog, April 2012  

Okay. We're down to only two weeks to go. I'm on the road again today, down for another quick two-nighter for some business. As I wrote last week, I'll be taking the new Fstop Guru bag as my personal item (I.E., under the seat) and my usual Tumi 20" rolling bag as my carry-on luggage (in the overhead). No other new testing for this trip - I've pretty much tried everything else I can try previously. I'm sure the Guru will be fine, as I've been carrying it pretty much everywhere since it arrived two weeks ago.




One item which I expect to be using a daily on the trip is Blogsy, which is the iPad app I'm using to write and compose this blog. It works well, but has a few bugs - one critical for me, and the other only annoying. The annoying one is that it periodically changes the font size of a paragraph or entire post as it posts it. That's why some posts are in a smaller font size.




The critical bug is that it sometimes strips all of the paragraph formating out of a post, leaving one long paragraph. I then need to re-edit the post, inserting paragraphs, and hope they stick when I update. On occasion I've had to do this several times to get it right. On occasion I've given up and used the web-based editor Google Blogger provides, which unfortunately doesn't work well on Mobile Safari.




I exchanged some email with the app maker, and they agreed there is a problem but haven't released an update yet to remediate it.

 

On the road

I started thinking about a good song mix to listen to while on the road, and then I started thinking about songs about being on the road or driving. Here are a few that come to mind:

I-95 in the fog, January 2012

• On The Road Again (Willie Nelson)
• Take It Easy (The Eagles)
• Little Honda (The Hondells, and The Beach Boys)
• Drive My Car (The Beatles)
• Born To Run (Bruce Springsteen)
• Mustang Sally (Wilson Pickett)
• You Can't Catch Me (Chuck Berry)
• You Can Sleep While I Drive (Melissa Etheridge)
• Unknown Legend (Neil Young)
• Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)

What are your favorites that reference driving?

At 11 we see the waterfall

The first derivative of the too-many-stops issue I discussed the other day is over-scheduling each day. I think most of you would agree that having to set an alarm to get up each morning and watch the clock all day long is not a relaxing vacation.

Vernal Falls, Yosemite, May 2010




On the other hand, having driven hundreds of miles to an awesome destination like Yellowstone means you want to, in whatever way makes sense, maximize the pleasure you get at that place. Since these parks are so big, and there are so many great sights to see and things to do, it's once again a balancing act: it pays to plan your trip, but it also pays to be flexible, relaxed about it, and leave plenty of time for loafing.

One technique is to have an outline of a day, with more ideas than you can accomplish, and explicitly agree to just work down the opportunities until you're tired, or hungry, or whatever. The good news is that none of the places we're visiting are likely to disappear in our lifetime, so we can always come back if it's important (this blog is subtitled "A-first-in-a-lifetime trip", after all).

The equally valid but opposite approach is to deliberately under-schedule the day, and find somewhere to loaf if you exhaust the sightseeing or other activities.

As always we will be mixing these techniques. In fact, I suspect that we will have some days where we're on slightly different plans for the day, and one of us will be chilling while the other is active. And vice versa.

 

 

If it's Tuesday, this must be Yellowstone

Visit California, October 2011

Many, perhaps most, people going to visit a place they are unfamiliar with look for information about their destination to get a sense of what they can and should do there. Some buy guidebooks. Some hire guides or book group tours to try and ensure they get the most out of the trip. For some people, there is a strong desire to "not miss anything".

 



 

This last group does not include us. Anymore.

 



 

In the early days of our traveling and touring, we were in that camp of not-missers. I think we both came to the conclusion, after not-too-many of these trips, that vacations should be, well, a vacation and not a job. Having all of your days scheduled from early to late, and obsessively running from site to site, just wasn't fun. So we adopted a policy that said, in large part, whatever we miss will either be there next time we come through, or we'll miss it without missing it. If you catch my drift.

 



 

We coupled this with a tendency to not have too many short stays in too many places over a too-short trip. We really didn't want to experience "if it's Tuesday, we must be in Belgium". And I think we've been pretty successful overall in achieving our objective, which is to relax and enjoy the places we are rather than to think of a trip as a set of goals to be checked off on some list.

 



 

How do I reconcile that travel philosophy with this trip, then? We are staying in 14 places over the course of 30 nights. We are traveling, excluding local touring in each location, about 2,700 miles by car. This concerns me. Is the trip going to be a marathon, a long car ride punctuated by carrying bags in and out of hotels? Are we going to be captured by the planning we/I am doing and miss the beauty of where we are to the details of what we have on our agenda? I won't know for sure for weeks yet, but here's what I think.

 



 

First consider that problem of the 14 hotels we have to find, check in to, move our stuff into, unpack, pack, move our stuff out, and check out of.

 



 

Four of them are one-nighters, and they are mostly related to just how big the country is. If you have to travel the 550 miles between, say, Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone, you kind of have two choices. The first is drive for 9 or 10 hours, which is pretty miserable. The second is to stop somewhere in the middle, breaking the trip up. To the extent you can find something interesting to see or do along the way at or near that stop, so much the better. But it does add to the hotel count.

 



 

We have one four-nighter and three three-nighters, which I would characterize as leisurely. Plenty of time to settle in, plenty of time to get to know the place before moving on. Although some might say I'm missing the point here by an order and magnitude and it's more like two weeks (or six months) to get to know a place. But I think this fits our attention span, for this trip.

 



 

That leaves five two-nighters. Two of them are after a relatively short drive - 1.5 and 2 hours, respectively. So I'm hoping they will feel like we just shifted rooms a little closer to where we want to be next, rather than a whole day of pack-check out-drive-drive-drive-check in. Only three of them seem to be a situation where we get to our destination late in the day, and have one full day before we pickup and leave again.

 



 

A final point should actually be the first point: my original concept for this trip was to spend a month "on the road". The destination was the road; the stops were, well, just stops along the way. In some sense it's a wonderful coincidence that our stops will be in some of the most magnificent locations in the world. Well okay, it's not really a coincidence. But the point is that if you go back to this concept you can see that we are probably achieved a decent balance on this trip.




 

Laundry Update

I know you're all waiting with great anticipation for me to give you the final outcome on our laundry dilemma. After all, if cleanliness is next to godliness, and laundry is key to cleanliness, then this is truly a Supreme issue.

Whiter than white, April 2012  

It's actually hard to believe the amount of time we've spent on this subject.




There is - not yet, at least - any Final Outcome. But here's what we've been up to.

• We've identified laundry facilities in or near five of our stops, which will go a long way towards allowing me to approach cleanliness on a regular basis.
• I've found some decent wash'n'wear undershorts, both comfortable and quick drying. I'll bring a few of those to bridge the gaps in the laundromat schedule.
• I've got several quick drying button down shirts designed for hiking and camping, and I plan on wearing these a bunch. They would look a little geeky around Manhattan, but will probably fit right into the National Parks and small towns we're spending about 75% of our time in. And let's just examine the other three spots: Las Vegas, where anything goes (and stays there); Napa Valley, filled with weekenders trying to look like farmers, I mean vintners; and San Fancisco, the national home of Individuallity. So other than looking nice in a few key restaurans, these should work in many situations.

As this develops further I'll be sure to keep you posted. I know you care deeply.

 

Pilot testing

Take me to the pilot of your soul, April 2012

No, not testing pilots to see if they know how to fly the plane. In my old life, "pilot testing" was when you tried out a new system on a limited set of users or under controlled circumstances to see how well it works. Given the number of new things I'm using and bringing on this trip, and the difficulty or expense or inconvenience of replacing some of them, I've been trying to pilot some of them. Preferably in concert where appropriate. In this context, the pilot is a short trip where I will either only suffer for a short period to easily remediate the problem.Last week I had another of these short business trips that seem to be creeping into my life. My plan was to test:

• My new camera bag
• My new wash'n'wear underwear
• My new washable travel and hiking wear

How did I do? Honestly, it was a mediocre test. As I wrote the other day, the camera bag order got screwed up and didn't come in time. And part of the wash'n'wear test was going to be around reuse of gym clothes. Since my hotel reservation also got screwed up, I didn't get to test that. All I was able to do was wash a pair of shorts, and they dried - and therefore passed the test. The good news and bad news is that it looks like I'll have one more flight before we Go Away. And the new backpack actually arrived. It looks good, and I'm expecting that it will be as helpful as I hoped. I'll post later exactly what that test will look like. That will cover some of the four scenarios that need dealing with:

1. Traveling from home to our first stop by air, returning from the last stop
2. Traveling from point-to-point in the car, with all the stuff conveniently accessible
3. Traveling with the wife at various places, where there is walking or light hiking, and bringing the big camera kit
4. Hiking without the wife, which will be strenuous and use the lightweight camera kit

I'm also going to retest the clothing/laundry bits. The more you can put together, the better the test represents the ultimate real situation.  

Quiet day

T-21

Yesterday was a quiet day. We actually had planned to go to the Mets/Giants game, but it was rained out and so we wound up with a free afternoon.

Rain out, April 2012  

I didn't buy any gadgets.



We both are continuing to refine our plans and packing lists.



I didn't field test any gear. I did try packing the Big Camera Kit in the Guru, and realized that there wouldn't be room for the wife's stuff on a hike. We had a brief conversation about her needing some small bag for lunch, water and a jacket, but no decisions were made.



We refined a couple of days' touring and travel schedules, which I find satisfying. We know when and where a bunch of our dinners will be. We know what a bunch of our sightseeing days will look like. We know a few stops that have convenient laundries.



There's still a lot to do.



 

 

It's in the bag

Okay, my new Fstopgear Guru bag finally came on Friday. A few hours early, actually. The UPS website was promising delivery sometime between 1:pm and 5:00pm; it actually came at 9:30am. Good thing there was no signature required, as I was out then.

So what do I think about this much anticipated new toy? A few things. First, it's smaller than I expected. I ordered it with two padded "Internal Camera Units" or ICUs and expected that I could, if I wanted, load it up with both of them. But only one at a time fits. When I reread the Fstopgear website description, it's slightly unclear but actually doesn't say it will hold both at the same time. This isn't a real problem, as I don't intend to haul two ICUs worth of gear on my back during this trip. It does mean I can't use this bag as my only carry-on, however.




The two ICUs (one Medium and one Small) fit perfectly into my rolling 20" carry-on. This is actually one of the travel options I'm considering - put all the heavy and fragile camera gear in the rolling bag for the air segments. The downside to this is that we'll be hauling the rolling bag in the car through the whole trip, when we really won't need it.




The pack itself is very well made and setup for hiking. Lots of attachment points for gear on the outside. I can strap my tripod on it. It has a pocket for a water badder while hiking, or you can slip an iPad or small laptop in there at other times. It rides on my back like a pack made for hiking - good shoulder straps and waist belt, nicely padded against your back, reasonably adjustable. it's not at the level of my Osprey Stratos 26 daypack, but that thing would be terrible for this trip - getting stuff in and out of it is a project. This new bag makes it easy to get at the camera and other gear, as is it's purpose. On the other hand, the Guru is much more comfortable to wear for hiking than my big Lowepro camera bag.




Since you can use the Guru without the ICUs, it also makes a decent day bag for general walking around or touring. Without these inserts, it a soft backpack not unlike many book bags, but with bigger, more comfortable and bulkier straps and a waist belt. The waist belt can be tied out of the way when you're not using them, but you're still carrying them and they add to the bag's bulk.




The Medium ICU handles the big camera and all of it's lenses easily. It won't accommodate all of the accessories that a pack rat might bring, but it definitely holds enough. And with the Medium ICU in the bag, there's still a modest amount of space for other gear. Here's a summary of my in-scope bags:

A four bagger, April 2012

• Lowepro Pro Runner 350AW - great camera bag, mediocre hiking backpack, terrible touring bag
• Fstopgear Guru - good camera back, good hiking bag, good touring bag
• Osprey Stratos 26 - miserable camera bag (I've tried it), outstanding hiking backpack, miserable touring bag
• North Face Borealis - poor camera bag, mediocre hiking backpack, good touring bag.

I could go on and on here, but you get the point. I have a bit more testing to do, mostly around making sure I can actually fit everything I need for different scenarios into it, but it's looking good.

 

Keeping track

In case you haven't noticed, the bulk of my posts thus far have been about planning for the trip. That makes sense; we haven't actually taken the trip yet so I can't really write much about what we've seen. And you may have formed an opinion about my planning, namely that it shows signs of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for those of you not surrounded by a family of psychologists). I assure you that all of this is necessary, and that there is actually a need for planning. Let me talk about planning a bit. This is a fairly complex trip. We are staying in fifteen places, each one needing a reservation. We have the car rental and air reservations. We now have reservations at some restaurants in Las Vegas, Yellowstone and Yosemite. As soon as we started putting the details of the trip together in January, I realized that we needed a database (I'm an old time database administrator, and my Ph.D. dissertation was about Information Retrieval technology). So I reviewed a few options, and settled on Evernote. Evernote is a database which runs on an iPad, iPhone, Windows or Macintosh computer, or in pretty much any browser. It gives you complete access to your data regardless of which platform you happen to be using at the moment, which was a basic requirement for me. Evernote uses the metaphor of a collection of notebooks, each composed of multiple notes. Notes can be text, pictures, PDFs, sound files, pretty much anything.

Evernote screen capture, April 2012

I've been using it for a while, and so I simply set up a notebook for the trip. Evernote also lets you share a notebook with others, so I've shared the trip notebook with the wife. Now we each can see the latest, up-to-date information we have at any time. And here's the kicker: it's completely free! Free as in free beer. Free as in you don't have to give them any money. If you really want to spend some money, you can buy the upgraded version for a few bucks per month, and get additional capacity and the ability to have multiple people to update a shared notebook. I don't need the capacity, and for this application, I think we're better off if only one of us can ever update the database - that way it's always clear what's going on with it. This notebook now has all the confirmations of our reservations, a detailed day-by-day master schedule, a not-yet-fully-formed sightseeing schedule, a variety of national park maps, and other information about the trip that may prove useful. OCD? I think not. Simply good project management techniques honed by years of experience watching people do this sort of thing for a living.  

Lead Time, or How I Learned to Manage Procrastination

Today I want to talk about lead time management, or the art of controlling procrastination. 

May 2012, April 2012

For a long trip like this, you need a lot of things. And you need to make a lot of plans. Sometimes, getting these things or making these plans need to be done with adequate lead time. For instance, once we started making reservations for hotels or flights, all of the dates became very sticky. If you're flying out on Tuesday, you absolutely need a hotel Tuesday night. And if you're spending Wednesday and Thursday at a location, then you absolutely need a hotel at that location for Wednesday and Thursday.

Since one of us (she shall remain nameless) has very strong ideas about specific hotels and often specific rooms in a hotel, once we started blocking out the trip it became a bit of a race to get all the reservations locked down. We actually did about 90% of it in a single 48 hour period at the beginning of January. I felt pretty good. Not procrastinating - getting the reservations made 4.5-5.5 months in advance got us almost everything we wanted exactly when we wanted it. Had we waited, I'm convinced that some of the choices would have been sold out, and we would have had to settle for second best (best being a relative term, defined by our wants and desires). Same with the air reservations.

Another aspect of managing procrastination is getting stuff. If you think you might want to buy something new for the trip (a jacket, a camera, whatever), you need to think a bit about how long it will realistically take to get it. And you can balance that with the desire to not commit too far in advance, in case your plan or what you want changes. Some things you can get pretty quickly, and some things there really isn't a strong likelihood of changing your mind about. We wanted toothpaste holders to replace the baggies we've been using, but didn't expect any difficulty acquiring them. So we just picked them up when we happened to see them in the store.

Some items are more complex. I wrote the other day about a new camera backpack I decided I wanted. The decision came after trying a lot of alternatives (mostly bags I already owned) under the use patterns I expect to have on the trip, and researching the available solutions when they all fell short. So I ordered this bag last Monday, expecting to have it Friday and having plenty of time to pilot it's use in the field - including a short business trip this week by air. As I wrote earlier, carry-on luggage optimization is a difficult task - with the airlines doing their best to frustrate you. This bag is a key part of the equation.

Fstop "Guru" backpack, April 2012

I got an email from Fstop the next day, which included a link to UPS showing a scheduled delivery Friday afternoon.

It didn't come Friday, which is surprising, as UPS and FedEx are pretty good at hitting their promised deliver dates.

It didn't come Saturday.

Monday morning I emailed the manufacturer and it turns out they had some problem with our credit card and cancelled the order. They claim to have emailed me about this and got no response; I have no record of this email and I've received a number of emails from them so they're not being spam filtered. And I checked my spam bucket anyway. I'm assuming we had a double failure: I entered the wrong credit card info, and they typed in the wrong email address.

Anyway, it's back on order and I should have it this afternoon. That leaves me only three weeks to try it out, and figure out another plan if this one fails, which might include another order delay. So while I'm comfortable with the level of procrastination I had here, I'm really using most of the time I have before having to fall back onto a solution with one of the bags I already have.

Did I leave enough time? I think so. But we'll see after I go live with the bag for a month.

Double check your work!

The lady and I often disagree over the level of scrutiny and review each individual thing needs before you make the decision or press the Go button. A case in point is ordering things online, or making reservations.

She: will carefully review each field - date, room category, our address, credit card number, etc. - before hitting Go. If I'm around, I often get asked to double check her work, which frankly I often think is unnecessary. She's pretty careful and hardly ever makes a mistake.

Me: will type the data into the fields as quickly as possible, make a cursory review for accuracy, then hit Go. And I'm a pretty fast typist, either two fingered on the iPad or full-handed on a real keyboard. After all, the vendor will double check much of the data anyway, and I'll get a confirmation email which I can review as well. Of course, I usually file the confirmation without reading it. If she looks over my shoulder while I'm doing any of this, I feel like I'm being back-seat-driven.

The business trip I'm on this week was just planned last week, but I've been down here before and so I knew exactly what flights, what hotel, what rental car I wanted. So making the reservations was efficient and quick. Very quick. I was very pleased.




Well, this week I found out what happens when you make a mistake. After the amusing announcement about carry-on luggage I wrote about, the plane flight down was smooth. The rental car was waiting for me in the assigned stall, ready to go. I found my way to the same hotel I've stayed at the last two times I was here, where the desk clerk took my name, welcomed me back, and let me know that they were expecting me May 17. Not April 17. And they were fully booked. And all the other hotels in the area have been calling them to see if they could accommodate their own overflow.

Luxury accommodations, April 2012  

I must say, the clerk was extremely gracious and helpful. She made about five phone calls and finally found a motel about eight miles away which had some space. I rushed down and checked into the Quality Inn, parking my car right next to the two semi tractors parked in the lot. Walked up to the room, passing the guy drinking a beer out of a paper bag walking down hall. Checked out the fitness room, which was about the same size as my closet at home and had an old treadmill and bike. The room was spacious, clean, only a little shabby and, really, the cigarette odor was pretty faint. Really.


This morning I came down to the included hot buffet breakfast, which was scrambled eggs (greasy), bacon (greasy) and potatoes (greasy) which I believe were cooked up right in back by the night clerk. Passed on that, went and found a box of Go-Lean Crunch at a supermarket on the drive back to the office. Stopped and got a coffee and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in the parking lot before going into the office.

Ah, I so miss the glamour of business travel.


 

 

Just a quick one, while I'm gone

I'm on a brief business trip this week where I'm piloting some stuff for the big trip, which I'll write about later. Just before boarding commenced for my outbound flight yesterday, the gate agent made the following announcement: (I'm paraphrasing, but I promise this is what they said):

No, you can't actually carry it on, April 2012

"We have a full flight. All of your carry-on luggage will not fit. I need 16 bags for gate checking. If you do it now, there won't be any excitement during boarding. And we won't charge you for a checked bag. Or else we'll wind up taking the same number of bags during the boarding process, probably from those of you in the back of the plane. Which will piss you off and piss everyone else off because it will waste time. So just come right up here and give us your bags."

It looks like a big plane to me, April 2012

 

They apparently got enough volunteers, as there didn't seem to be any excitement during the boarding process. The crush to line up and board was a bit more frenetic than usual, however.

As my wife says, they really are going through pains to make air travel as difficult as possible. For years I've refused to fly when driving is possible, even if it theoretically would take longer. I say "theoretically" because between delayed departures, rerouted landings, lost baggage and cancelled flights, it often turns out to actually be quicker to drive despite what the schedules say.

The last time I flew to Boston from NY, which was more than 20 years ago, the flight home - all the remaining flights home - were cancelled one evening because of "thunderstorm activity near Hartford". We wound up spending the night in Boston at a very nice hotel with no change of clothes, toiletries, etc. Since then, I've driven dozens of times without incident, without stress, and WITHOUT ANY FRIGGIN' AIRLINES.

 

What we don't need

The bulk of the traveling I did while I was still working for those Big International Banks was - no surprise - international. When you go international, you need to bring a bunch of stuff that we won't need.

Below the picture is a list of stuff we won't be bringing on this trip.

Some things I won't be bringing, April 2012

• Foreign currencies
• Electrical adapters
• Mobile phone roaming
• Passports
• Visas
• Language translaters/dictionaries

Hurray!

 

 

Specialized or General?

T-28 ....

Gear-head alert - this post may be a little technical, especially the second part, and induce EGOS (Eyes Glazing Over Syndrome).

Continuing on the theme of what to bring on the trip, let's talk today about specialty vs general items. Specialty items are those that are carefully designed and optimized to meet a specific purpose; general items are those which can serve to satisfy many needs. One might think that a trip such as this calls out for the greatest possible use of general items, as that could allow you to bring fewer things overall. But I would argue, that as in many things, it's the balance that matters. And perhaps a little definitional flexibility.

On Friday we went shopping for some clothing for her to use in the great outdoors. As I mentioned, we'll be traveling from a cold climate (lows of 28F in Yellowstone) to a warm one (highs of 102F in Death Valley), and every temperature range in between, over the course of the trip. What jacket to bring for our outdoor activities? A heavy winter coat, which we both own, would be great for those cold times but a real pain to carry around, and really uncomfortable for the merely cool days or nights. The old advice for outdoor activities is to use layers, so we embraced that: we each bought an extremely lightweight, Gore-Tex lined shell. We'll bring a fleece jacket and perhaps a thermal layer and then choose which to wear depending on conditions. The jackets are so light that they can easily be stuffed in a backpack if we're on a hike and it warms up. They're also waterproof, so they can act as rain jackets as well.

Are they general, or specialized? I could argue either way. They are clearly designed for the specific purpose: you're going to be outdoors and can't predict the weather in advance, but know you are likely to experience a range of conditions, and you only get to bring one item. But at the same time they're general, in the sense that they serve to meet those many conditions: cold weather, cool weather, rainy weather. I guess they are specialized to meet a general range of needs.

Another one is specifically my problem, not hers. When touring, I usually carry a small day pack with me. It's not very big, is lightweight, and has lots of pockets and sleeves for pens, phones, iPads, etc. You can stuff a sweater or a camera inside. It's easy to access each thing you are carrying. But any fragile stuff I put in it, like an iPad or camera, brings along its own protective case. The shoulder straps are too short for me, and the waist belt is mostly useless.

When doing photography, I usually carry a photography backpack with me. It's heavily padded to protect the gear, and is pretty heavy. It has special attachment points for a tripod. There are lots of padded dividers inside, and they attach with Velcro so you can customize the interior for the stuff your carrying. I've used it for day hikes, but it's far from ideal. For instance, it's tough to fit a jacket or first aid kit into the small spaces designed for a lens or filter.

When hiking, I use a very specialized lightweight framed pack which distributes a large load comfortably on my hips and shoulders, has room for a water bladder, and tie-downs for hiking poles. This pack would be terrible as a day bag, or as a camera bag, as it's hard to get things in and out, it is lightweight and has no padding, and is designed to ride extremely comfortably balanced on your hips and shoulders.

A specialized hiking backpack, April 2012

On this trip I need to hand carry most of my photography gear on the plane with me, as it's too fragile and too theft conducive to risk putting in checked baggage. I won't necessarily carry all of that gear with me on any particular outing during the trip, and also may need some of the items I put in the checked baggage, like my tripod.

Each of these uses is optimized by a different bag or case. and in fact, the bags that are best for each are not really usable for the other purposes. I've read on forums that I frequent of people who actually bring multiple camera transport things with them when they travel: roll aboard bags for the plane ride, backpacks or photo vests for the photography, etc. I'm trying to avoid that. I found a company that makes a line of bags that seem specialized for this general set of purposes - Fstopgear.

The key to their designs is that they separate the padded aspect of a camera bag, which protects the delicate gear, from the outer shell. So I've ordered a hiking backpack with two removable "ICUs" (that's what they call the internal padded pieces - Internal Camera Units). The backpack portion seems to be about the size of my carry-around North Face day pack, but designed for serious hiking - great shoulder straps and waist belt, lots of configurable attachment points, room for a water bladder, etc.

My hope is that this will give me several configurable options:

• I can pack the heavy and fragile camera gear in the ICUs, and place them in my rolling carry-on for the plane ride. I can then use use the pack as my "personal item" in airline terms (i.e., it will fit under the seat).
  
• If we're spending the day mostly driving with short walks to sites I might want to photograph, I can load the gear for the day into the ICUs and put then into backpack. Other gear we'll need for the day - a sweater or jacket, food or snacks, water, etc. - can stay in the car until we need them at some stop.
  
• If I'm doing some extended hiking, I can take one of the two ICUs in the backpack, loaded with a small camera kit, along with the hiking supplies I'll need - the lightweight jacket, food, water, first aid kit, etc. I can strap the tripod on the outside if I'll be using it.
  

Specialized or general? You decide.

 

 

 

What to do?

One of the advantages to taking a long trip is the freedom that comes with so many days - the freedom to do so many things, your head's likely to explode just trying to sort it all out. So I think we're only going to sort out a some of it in advance, and leave the rest for when we're there.

It's also interesting, and not surprising, that each of us is trying to optimize the part of the trip we are most looking forward to.

 

Research material, April 2012

I spent a couple of evenings outlining the sites in the National Parks and other outdoorsy areas we'll be visiting - the Black hills, Yellowstone, etc. When I asked her about preferences or showed her a sample day's schedule, her eyes pretty much glazed over. "Whatever you want to do, dear."

She spent the last several days analyzing the show and restaurant scene in Las Vegas. When she asked me where I wanted to eat, or whether I wanted to eat before or after a show, I began thinking about whether I had the right set of graduated neutral density filters for a lens with a 77mm thread. My answer to her was, of course, "Whatever you like, dear". Which I realize is not really helpful.

This diversity of activities will, I think, help keep us both fresh and looking forward to our next stop as we travel around for such a long time. I think so many days of rustic experiences would dull the pleasure of them for me, although I wonder if I'll be happy or sad to leave my hiking boots in the closet for a few days and wear loafers.

Then there's this blog. "Have you been reading my blog?". "No, why? You're writing it already?" "Well, yes." "We don't leave for a month yet - what is there to say?" Hmmmm ...

 

 

 

 

What do you do about laundry, anyway?

. Black T-shirt, April 2012

This is a touchy subject around here. My wife is, not surprisingly and happily for me, a very clean person. While I'm clean as well, I'm perhaps not up to the same standards that she sets. So when we start talking about how many changes of clothes to bring on this trip, and where we will do laundry, the conversation immediately gets all bogged down in different world views, which are based (as usual) on different realities.

Her reality: a large pile of panties takes approximately no space in the suitcase.

My reality: a large pile of undershorts takes a goodly portion of the space in the suitcase.

So our divergent worldviews lead us to divergent views on this very issue: how many changes to bring?

I say: well, I'll bring a half dozen or so, and do laundry every week or so.

She says: I'm not running my delicates through some skanky meat grinder of a washer in a laundromat with an uncertain history in some random town in Backhills, WY.

So where do we go from here? One option, the easy one, is she does her thing and I do mine. She brings sufficient changes of clothing, all of which will fit into a handbag, while I stuff the maximum number that fits into my giant suitcase and do laundry three or four times during the trip. Which will leave her plenty of room in her suitcase for the things that matter: makeup, hair products and maintenance gear, and shoes.

We once went away for a week and if memory serves, she brought more than one pair of shoes for every day. Now, she'll take exception to this, claiming that three pair of flip flops don't count as shoes, but whatever. And why does anyone need three pair of flip flops anyway? (Answer: one pair for inside, one pair for hanging at the pool or beach, and one nice pair for going for pizza.) She also points out, and she's right on this, that her shoes are delicate and damaged easily, and need to be packed carefully and not squished. My shoes, on the other hand, can be used as hammers if you find there's a nail that needs to be set flush.

Anyway, back to laundry. Another option is to hand-wash your stuff every night or every few nights. This requires that you don't wear anything actually made of a natural fiber such a cotton, which will hang dry in about four days. Again, not a problem with the lady's unmentionables, but I'd have to buy a new wardrobe of undies and t-shirts. Have you every tried those products that claim to let you wash them in the hotel sink and wear them a few minutes later? I'm down with Coolmax for a run or a day of hiking, but wearing it 24x7 is not my idea of luxury.

And then they're always hanging in the bathroom, drying. It gets on your nerves after a while.

One could choose to use the hotel laundry service, except that it seems to come in two flavors: not available, or priced so it's actually cheaper to throw away the dirty stuff and buy new clean stuff.

So I'm guessing that we're headed to a split decision: she'll bring approximately one change of stuff for each day we're away, which will make her happy and will fit in a flea's navel, while I'll bring my huge pile of seven changes and find a laundromat each week.

 

 

 

Hello E-clutter

A pile of wires, 2012

The flip side of not having to carry film, books, maps, itineraries, etc. is having to carry electronics. Or more importantly, is having to carry chargers and connecting cables for all the gadgets. Here's a list of the wires, cables, batteries and chargers I'll be bringing on this trip.

1. Camera charger - fortunately and unbelievably, my two Nikon cameras - the D7000 DSLR and smaller Nikon 1 V1 mirrorless interchangeable lens camera - use the same battery and charger. So three batteries gives me one in each camera and a spare being charged for tomorrow.

(Note to self: do I need a backup charger, or is my OCD showing? What if I loose mine? How fast can Amazon deliver to Yellowstone?)

2. Apple i-Devices - between us we will have two iPhones and two iPads. Because we charge all of them every night, we will have four charging sets for them. Obviously they can back each other up.

3. TomTom GPS - charging cable for the car, and a backup that has a USB plug at the other end. This falls under the rule of bringing plenty of something with is hard to replace. It has a weird connector you can only buy from TomTom at an exorbitant price.

4. A Belkin multi-tap plug for the room - I've found that electrical outlets in most hotel rooms are scarce, and there are sometimes just enough for the lamps, phones and clocks they supply. This gizmo lets me plug in three AC plugs and two USB cables at once.

5. An auto cigarette lighter thingee that lets me charge two USB devices at the same time while in the car.

6. Another auto cigarette lighter thingee that gives me two outlets from one in the car.

7. Some hotel rooms have TVs or radios with an audio input jack. So I bring a stereo cable which lets me play music from my i-Device. The same cable will let me jack into the Aux input in the car, if it has one.

So if I'm counting accurately, three batteries, eight plugs and eight cables.

 

 

 

 

Goodbye, Stuff

I mentioned a couple of days ago there are some real advantages to travel these days, given new technologies that replace old stuff with smaller, more flexible and better stuff. Of course, these qualitative assessments are my opinions, and you may disagree. But here's a list of some stuff that I used to travel with that I have replaced with electronic or other updated stuff.

Film: I used to buy a dozen or so rolls of film for a trip of a week or two, and hope that the 432 pictures would be enough. Plus, I had to argue with the security guys at the airport about x-raying the film, and remember to never leave the film in the car during warm weather. This trip I'll travel with 8 or 10 SD cards for my digital camera(s) which will hold a couple of thousand images in the space of a single box of film I don't have to worry about overheating in the car, don't have to worry about x-rays in the airport. And my main camera - a Nikon D7000 - actually allows me to write the images to two cards at the sames time, giving me a good backup.

Books, April 2012

Books - my iPad has completely replaced all physical books, especially when traveling. I don't have to fill half a suitcase with books. I don't have to carry two books on the plane in case I finish the first one. I don't even have to buy the books in advance, as long as I'll have Internet access in some form wherever I'll be - I can buy a Kindle book pretty much anywhere in the world in about a minute.

Maps and directions - all on my iPad. Google Maps ( or comparable services) give me immediate access to road maps and directions. I've also downloaded maps to many of the Parks we'll be in and stored them on the iPad.

Itineraries, confirmations, hotel addresses, etc. - all on the iPad. No need to carry a big envelop with all that paper.

And none of this speaks to the almost-always-on nature of the Internet today. We have email, the Web, chat and texting, and things like this blog which will keep us in touch with all of you wherever we go. So while I will share the details of our plans with a few people, we will always be at the same place: the end of a phone call or receiving an email.

 

Frequent Flier Follies

You read earlier about the fun and games in finding an affordable ground transportation option. Booking air travel is also fun, especially when you're traveling to and returning from different cities. And double fun when you're doing it all with frequent flier miles.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, and in the NYC area, I had this illusion that every airline flew non-strop between every two cities. This illusion was caused by two phenomena. In that era of heavy airline regulation, many airlines did fly between lots of cities, and often non-stop. Fares were regulated and high, and you could run a plane profitably with a low occupancy rate. The second is that I was in NYC, and you could fly to many places non-stop from there. I'm sure that even then flying between, say Hartford and Topeka non-stop was probably not possible.

Near the North Pole, 6:15 am EDT, May 2007 - the shortest route between Hartford and Topeka

Today, of course, the airlines use sophisticated software to keep their occupancy rates as close to 100% as possible. I can't remember the last time I was on a domestic US flight where the attendants didn't announce that they expected the flight to be full (see also: "Sir, we'll have to check that bag as all the overheads are full"). And they've all switched to hub-based routing, so you can get to their hub from where you are, but not any non-hub cities without a change. Of course, NYC is still the center of the universe, so we can fly to a lot of places from here.

BUT … if you're flying out of NYC to one city, and back from another, you are highly likely to find that you will need different airlines if you also want to meet two other criteria: travel non-stop, and use frequent flier miles. And so it was for our trip: NYC to Denver on the way out, San Francisco to NYC on the way back. Frequent Flier miles both ways.

As it turns out, we found a pretty good set of choices that achieved these goals, but we had to give on scheduling (our flight out leaves in the early evening, which means we get there very late at night). The fun part was getting all the frequent flier miles to the right places. You see, our plan is to fly JetBlue from NYC to Denver, and American from San Francisco back to NYC. We have plenty of miles with American Airlines; in fact, I'm a lifetime Platinum member based on all the travel I used to do for business. We have next to none JetBlue miles. But it turns out that the American Express award system lets you buy miles on JetBlue using the AmEx award points, and we do have lots of points there. The trick is that you have to fund the JetBlue frequent flier account before you can actually book the flight, and the AmEx web site says this could take a day or two. During which time your chosen flight could fill up, forcing you to book a different flight or perhaps day, thus requiring a change to the flight at the other end of the schedule since we have a pretty fixed number of days to accommodate our planned stops.

The good news is that we were able to make all the requisite transactions happen on time, and all the flights and ground reservations are now aligned.

Talking Trash

Well not trash exactly, but that pile of stuff that you try and fit into whatever luggage you (and the airlines) have allotted yourself. I don't know about you, but the suitcase is invariably just too small for your stuff. There appears to be a natural constant like PI, let's call it SI (I don't know why, but lets try), whose value is approximately 1.1. Thus if you have L cubic feet of luggage capacity, you have L*SI cubic feet of stuff.

And how does one pack for an extended trip like this anyhow? The old rule of bringing a change of underwear for each day, plus an extra, doesn't work as the day count moves into the dozens. Add to that the fact that we start in what is likely to be a late winter climate (Rapid City May average temperature range: 52/35) and pass through Death Valkey and Las Vegas in early June (Death Valley June average temperature range: 102/90). So we're looking at a lot of stuff and complexity here, folks.

Luggage at airport, February 2007

Now let's layer on all the non-clothing stuff. As I mentioned above, Guitar Man may be the name but photography's the game. And you can't pack your cameras and lenses in your checked luggage. If you do, then you're likely to find at the luggage carousel one of two things: a big empty space where your gear used to be, or a pile of parts where your gear used to be. So you need to carry your photo gear on board and hope the gate police don't say those words you dread the most: "I'm afraid you'll have to gate check that bag, sir".

To be continued ...

 

 

Car Wars

T-35 days

If you know me, you know that one of the most important aspects of a long road trip is how you will traverse the road - in other words, what vehicle will you take? We considered a number of options, starting with the most basic - we actually own some cars, so why not use one of those? The problem, of course, is that the closest area of interest to our home is about 1,700 miles away, and the ending point of the tour is about 2,900. Thus adding nine or so days to the trip - more than we want to invest in travel to and from.

So we moved onto the choices of renting a vehicle.

My better half had graciously offered to take me up literally on an oft-stated desire of mine, namely to rent an RV and just drive for a month or more and see what we could see. This, of course, would need to be tempered (in the spirit of making the trip enjoyable for both of us) with frequent stays in four five star hotels. Realizing that most four five star hotels don't have suitable parking for an RV, and also not wanting to make our first trip in one on such a long trip, we quickly devolved back to perhaps the most boring of all choices - just rent a car.


Since the trip will start in Rapid City, SD, to see the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore, my first research involved pricing the major companies (Hertz, Avis, etc.) for their "one-way" price between Rapid City and our final destination in San Francisco. The prices which came back - about $8,000 for a medium sedan - encouraged me to try two other options: buying a car and then reselling it, or using an off brand rental company.


Joe's Bar & Rentals of Rapid City offered both - I could either rent this fine vehicle, or buy it outright:

1950 Plymouth, February 2012


He promised to make me a good price, but I wasn't sure.

In thinking it through, I realized the problem was that there really isn't a big market to drive cars back to Rapid City from San Fran, so I priced the rental from Denver and it came out to a much more reasonable price - between $1,600 and $2,100, depending on the rental company and class of car. So we will have an eminently boring large sedan, which will probably be quite comfortable. We also realized that flying to Denver will be easier than Rapid City, but that's another story.

 

 

 

We won't be traveling like this ...

Why?

Why am I doing this?

Photo: Manhattan behind the George Washinton Bridge, from Englewood, NJ, October 2011

Well, a few months ago my lovely wife gave me a great birthday present: a month out west visiting the national parks. So that's what this will be all about - documenting our travels through the West. 

Since I'm a fotofanatic, I intend to include lots of pictures. Hope you like them and our story.

The picture above is our metaphorical starting point.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.  It's a big world.

Photo: some river in the Eastern Sierra Nevadas, Oct 2011