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Suntrek Trip “Sunshine Trail”, approximately 3 weeks

Do you know this feeling, you go on a long journey and you think you will be cut off from the rest of the world and if you forgot something it’s too late to go back and get it.

Not this trip. Before I left, my Uncle John equipped my brother and me with an HP Laptop of the pavilion 5700 series. It has built in WiFi 802.11b/g, and a pretty big HDD (40 GB).

Now the plan was to just save the pictures from my digital camera onto the HDD and be able to backup them on CD later, during the trip. The memory capacity of a regular 256 MB memory card does not last too long. Usually I take about 30-40 pictures a day, which means it lasts about 3 days. And then? People without Laptop go on a journey in the journey, trying to find a CVS/Pharmacy just to copy the pictures on a CD, without having them in any order and for about 2$. It’s a lot of work to put more than ten of such CD’s in an order at home, after the trip, when you are back to work and you don’t remember every name of the sightseeing points.

Here I find it very important to mention that I’m very accurate in renaming the pictures from something like “cimg2004.jpg” to something like “ Philadelphia – Independence Hall.jpg”. It’s is going to be a 5,5 weeks trip and nothing could keep my pictures in an order if I wouldn’t be able to put them in appropriate folders and name them.

So far you should see the point of having a Laptop. Now maybe people consider me crazy to take a Laptop on a camping trip. Here I can justify it by the things I just mentioned and it’s a camping trip by Minivan, so I can’t even just keep it in the car, I can also charge it there from the cigarette outlet and work while we’re on long trips from one place to another.

1 st day(09/05/2004)

We met in the hall of the Habitat Hotel, 57 th Street , NYC.

If you know T-Mobile you’ve probably heard of “Hotspots” all over the United States in Starbucks, Kinko’s, McDonalds and Barnes Nobles and so on. There is a Starbucks right next to the Hotel, I was thinking of checking my mail, since my Uncle also got a month of subscription for this service. I didn’t do it, I was too excited to miss the appearing of the guide or the departure of my group. I have everything what is connectable to my laptop in a Laptop backpack, though, ready anytime. So we met the guide, the group and started the day. The plan was a city tour through NYC. I know the city pretty well, since I lived close to it for one whole year. My brother and I decided just to jump off the bus in Chinatown and go shopping. We had 3 hours of time and I took the Laptop with me. Matthias, a group member joined us. So we went shopping, got tired and stopped in a Starbucks on Broadway, next to Canal Street . I was keen on trying the internet service, so I did. We checked our e-Mail, wrote our friends and family in Germany . Also I checked the newest Windows XP Professional updates and NAV updates.

Then we kept walking around, shopping and so on. We got some discount clothes in American Eagle and then went back to the Van, to meet with the group again.

Since the rest of the group decided to take the Liberty Island Ferry and this was late… we were alone. We went for Lunch with Stephan (our Guide) and looked in an Harley Davidson Shop afterwards.

Then… time to leave. I am allowed to plug the Laptop into an cigarette-lighter-to-outlet-converter and charge it. I sat in the front seat and just wrote a couple of e-Mails until I got carsick on halfway of New Jersey Turnpike, so I stopped that. Anyway I let “Net-Stumbler” run in the background while we where driving through NYC. Just on 57 th Street this program found about 50 private Hotspots and about only 35% of them where secure networks. I wished for a program to do automatic roaming from one hotspot to another, it would have made me able to surf the internet while driving through Manhattan . Anyway, why arrived at the Campground and set up the tents.
The first cooking group made curry-chicken and rice. Tasty =)

We started by 8:30am and got to Philadelphia by 10am . It’s a nice city, I knew it already. Anyway we went to see the Liberty Bell and the Independence Hall, very interesting place. After that our free time in Philly was over. We got a little extra time and I used it to go to Starbucks and check my Mail. Also the group had this idea to go to an American football game, so I checked some websites for locations, times, prices and phone numbers. Thanks to the ease of WiFi and the internet I found what I needed really quick.

The dial in with t-Mobile is no problem by the way, sometimes it doesn’t work the first time, so then it does the second time, it’s a matter of seconds.

We left Philadelphia by 12:30pm , heading towards Washington D.C. Also I know this city already, but I wanted to show Georgetown to my brother, he didn’t get to see it at his last visit. I carried the Laptop for the second and last time through the city for sightseeing, just in case I find time to check my mail, it’s heavy and hurts my back, even though I have an comfortable backpack. It’s just not necessary to carry it all the time, I decide to plan internet sessions for the future and then just take it with me when I really need it. But it’s not that I am only using once or twice a week now. As soon as we get in the car, I’m downloading my pictures from my digital camera, put them in folders and rename them, so they’re ready to upload. Unfortunately I won’t find the time to upload them.

By about 6:30 We got back from Washington D.C. to the camp ground ( Cherry Hill ). As soon as we got in I saw a sign for WiFi access, but I wasn’t sure if it would be all over the campground. I turned the Laptop on and was connected immediately. Ok, it was just the server of the company who sells the internet access, but I had an 11Mb/sec connection from my sleeping bag in the tent. Amazingly cool!!! So I signed up for 24h access and paid 6$ easily by credit card over the server connection. The access worked and we downloaded the national anthems of our group members in a minute. I forgot to tell you that we bought the national flags of every group members origin to put in front of our tents, which turned out to be pretty cool.

The night we spent at the camp fire and surfing the internet next to the warm fire.

The next day was free for us to explore D.C., I did not take the laptop, since we had access in the camp grounds.

When we got back from Washington D.C. that day, my 24h access was expired and I decided not to get a new period. Instead we went swimming in the pool and relaxed in the hot tub. Very cool!