Travel Gear

It's travel catalog time again, that annual ritual when I actually thumb through the catalogs packed with all kinds of techie goodness, as opposed to pitching them directly into the recycling bin. You know the stuff - UV water filters, short wave radios with travel alarm clocks, door alarms, motion sickness relief bands, white noise generators. Apparently if I have all these items I'll sleep better, avoid amoebic dysentery, and meet beautiful Russian women... oops, wrong catalog.

Anyhow, every year, especially before a big trip, I start checking out what we're missing. It is pretty rare that we see anything we feel might be really useful. Over time we've concluded that something has to be really special to justify hauling it around, especially as I'm normally the one who does the hauling.

Still there are some things that over the years we've found to be useful and sometimes, damn useful.

First, my iPod. Back in the old days, the dark years, like in the 20^th century, I used to lug around a portable CD player and a manpurse full of CD's. No longer. Now I can carry thousands of songs all on one little white block the size of a pack of cards. Or I could if I knew thousands of songs. But the three I do have on the iPod get plenty of play. I probably have saved something like 2-3 pounds weight. No more scratched CD's either. The increasing prevalence of iPod docks in hotel room sound systems has also been a boon.

Laptops. Till recently I managed to avoid carrying my own laptop since only Mary needed to update the website from the road or check e-mail. I subscribed to the belief that travel should be devoted only to sampling the deep fried snack foods of the locals and consumption of mai tais. Why mai tais? I'm not sure - it just seems vacationy. Of course, in my capacity as the designated mule I do the actual laptop toting for Mary.

Now that I have this blog, we're looking at the possible need to bring laptops for each of us. I would use Mary's laptop but for some reason my large clumsy fingers are too ginormous for Mary's tiny little keyboard and I frequently manage to trigger some esoteric key combo that shuts down the laptop unexpectedly or diverts the browser onto the Victoria's Secret website, completely by accident you understand. This subject is still up in the air though we'll have a resolution long before the Round the World trip kicks off in January.

We had a rather ancient digital camera that probably comes on half the trips we take. But time has passed it by and we just upgraded to a Nikon Coolpix S200. We're not big picture takers. We usually take the camera along on trips that we're going to write about so that we have some visuals to go with the article. The upgrade was due, mostly because the original camera was pretty much a first gen digital and we wanted something with a bit more oomph, as well as a decrease in size and weight.

We only take one cell phone with us when we travel, primarily because we only have one cell phone. In my advancing dotage I've turned into a bit of a Luddite and I don't actually own a cell phone. Well, I do but it's just an emergency phone that Mary got me that I have to keep in the car.  I did actually find it useful recently when I found myself in the checkout line at the grocery store without my wallet, but that's pretty much the only time in the last three years I've used a cell.

Mary, on the other hand, has a Blackberry. There's occasionally some question about whether or not she needs me when she has her Blackberry, also known as "her Precious," but so far they haven't designed one that can bring you a skim latte. The Blackberry has come in quite handy for times when we don't want to pull out the laptop and find a WiFi network so Mary can check her email. This gives her peace of mind, which of course means that I have peace of mind. We've considered changing over to an iPhone, but the lack of utility overseas has put those plans on hold till later.

One gadget that has been a lifesaver is the iGo power adapter and recharger. This all-in-one device can be used both to power our laptop and recharge any and all of the other miscellaneous devices we take traveling with us such as the iPod, cell phones, and the like. This one piece of equipment alone has probably saved us 3-4 pounds of weight since we no longer have to tote around multiple power supplies and rechargers.

My one indulgence nowadays is my Bose QuietComfort 2 noise canceling headphones. They are expensive as all get out and probably not worth it from a strict cost benefit analysis standpoint, still I loves 'em deeply. On long flights they really do reduce ambient noise to such an extent that I can enjoy my music or the in-flight entertainment in blissful peace. Mary's one indulgence is me.

Upgrades and additions to travel gadgets:

One day in the not too distant future I'll probably replace my old iPod with an iPod Nano. The old iPod has 30gb but the screen display is fairly poor (I have to continually keep adjusting the contrast) and it's a bit heavy and bulky. The newest Nanos are up to 8GB and that's just about enough for me. So, soon - maybe as a Christmas present or something.

We almost certainly will replace Mary's Blackberry with a Blackberry Curve 8310 if we don't get an iPhone. This would kill a couple of birds with one stone. Not that we really want to kill birds with stones or anything. Unless they're quail. Mmmm...quail. Anyhow the newer Blackberry comes with a 2 megapixel camera which is a nice backup for shorter trips when we don't want to carry the regular camera. The GPS upgrade is more for Mary's benefit as I hardly ever get lost.

One piece of tech that I've been waiting for that has not yet arrived, at least not in a mature enough form to be useful, is a digital book reader. Usually on trips of a week or so we end up taking a minimum of 5-6 books between us. The weight adds up and having an ebook reader would be a godsend if they ever get the tech right. I had pinned my hopes on the Sony Reader but when I went in to Borders to check it out, the unit on display was hopelessly locked up, to the point where even flipping the on/off switch failed. Apparently Amazon will be coming out with their own version of an ebook reader sometime during October. I haven't heard enough about it to form much of an opinion about it yet. One can hope that Apple might decide to try their hand on something in the digital reader line soon. I know once someone comes up with a decent product I'll be first in line with fistfuls of cash.

Mary feels that we ought to get a UV SteriPEN for killing microbes in drinking water in other countries and whenever we visit family in New Orleans. I have always found that limiting liquid intake to beer and occasionally harder liquors seems to be an effective means of avoiding cholera. Mary takes issue with brushing her teeth with beer and seems disinclined to adapt. So we'll probably try one of these out soon - I'll act as the control subject and maintain my all-beer, all-the-time, methodology and she'll drink the irradiated water. Perhaps we'll try and get a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine.