…and around it goes

After typing out The Trip, a few things happened. First I found out that this blog is not dead. That there are many who get notified in some way that I have updated. Most of you have expressed your displeasure that I have disabled comments. The problem is the spammers abuse it so much I got fed up with it. Comments are more work for me and I like the less work for me concept better.

The Trip spurred e-mail discussion, both from readers and here at home with my girlfriend (well, not by e-mail with her, she’d be a tad ticked if I did that). The general consensus was that I should do it. My girlfriend agrees, not happily (I don’t think she wants me gone that long), but she understands. So a tentative date, summer 2010.

This will give us time to sell the condo and settle into the house. I’m attempting to entice a friend to go with me, but don’t know if he can. It’s one of those trips that is safer with two, but a better journey for one. Either way I will still go. I have to plan an itinerary, it will be a one or two month trip. Lots of stops to visit places, things, and people. I also have to figure out how to fund it.

It won’t be overly expensive, but even $200 a day for gas/tolls/food/lodging/etc. adds up to $12k for sixty days time and and 18k for ninety days. Granted some days will be less, but some will be more. I also must have cushion for the unforeseeable, a major bike repair or something. All this while also keeping a household and children going. I have almost two years to save it, but it will be tricky as I put nearly everything Packetderm earns back into the business.

In addition I would like to video blog it. To do this as well as easily work from the road I do need a full pc. I have used my ipaq with a bluetooth kb to ssh back to the servers, but it’s missing some things I need and would be cumbersome for handling the video uploading as well as the servers and e-mail. A small laptop is what is needed, but that takes up lots of space for a bike trip. That has me looking at umpcs.

I’m considering a 1.6 ghz, 120 GB, 1 gig ram, Verizon EVDO oqo umpc. About the size of my ipaq 4705 but a full XP or Vista (hope for XP) machine. That looks like $1700 on e-bay, ouch. I also must find a decent video camera. Something that is small, good picture in most light levels, good battery life, that can be waterproofed somehow.

Anyway, this is going to be a lot of fun if I can get it to work. Not so sure on that now, financial crisis always rears it’s head at the most inopportune time. However, at least now the only remaining obstacle is financial, that’s a quantifiable target and the service continues to grow daily, lately at an accelerated rate, so we’ll see.