Techy Blog Note

This techy blog note is for anyone who may care about such things while traveling.

We used our trusty iPad minis again for all computer related activities on this trip that our iPhones weren't suited for. They worked great in Europe last year and even more so this trip. We’ve had more time to discover software and learn more about using these devices effectively. One thing that still needs work is maintaining a blog while traveling. We created our blog on Goggle's free blog site before leaving. It’s too hard to use the Google Blog website on a small screen to maintain the blog while traveling so we used tricks like sending email to the blog or ipad apps for that purpose. None of these methods were completely reliable and we often had to take extra steps to clean things up either before or after posting on the internet. This lead to more than a little frustration and the goal is to have a better solution before our next trip. Yikes, I said the same thing last year when we had similar problems. Meanwhile we were able to post lots of notes and photos from the trip on the blog while we travelled.

We got lots of input from telecomm companies and decided not to put Canadian SIM cards in our iPhones or iPads for Internet access while on the train etc. There were limitations in being able to purchase those cards because we weren't going to be in Canada for at least 3 months it seems. Instead, we used Skype, FaceTime and Google Voice which still allowed us to make calls where we had an internet connection. That worked well because we were often in or close to cities. Some trains had wireless which was also available in most train stations, all the places we stayed at or often those places we visited during our journey. We did turn our phones on for a few important short calls home.

We had better iPhone 5s phones on this trip which take better photos and handle all the other things one does including email, tweets, websites and much more. We weren't tempted to go for the new and much bigger iPhone 6s and besides they weren't available. I did have fun getting my hands on the biggest one in the Big Apple Apple Store no less.

The new iPhone 6+ is nearly as big as my iPad mini

 

The best camera is the one you have with you

What about next year? It's likely we'll use the same equipment with some new software. We might need local SIM cards more if we go out of the country and we away from urban areas. That would mean different numbers for us but necessary to stay in touch and make connections on such a trip. Laurie does have her small Panasonic Lumix digital camera with many gigs of storage and we did finally learn more about getting more of its powerful features to work for us on this trip. We intend to create a slide show of the trip and expect many of the photos will come from her camera. That's still on the list of things to do since we got back.

The Grand Tour Continued, at least for our package

One of the things that we’ve learned about our travel mode, is that we need to keep things light so that we can make those public transit connections on time and carry our own bags up the narrow flights of stairs that seem to always be present in the great places we stay. As we travel, we do tend to gather piles of new information, cool gifts and personal items, and find out that some of our careful packing just wasn’t needed. The solution for all of these things is to get a box and pack all such items up and send them back home. Not cheap, but it is hard to put a price on having space in your luggage again and being able to pick those bags up for boarding or rough pavement. This great plan has worked well for several trips now and saved us much in the way of time, effort, and aching backs.

Unfortunately, the large box we mailed to Elle from Portland Maine never made it there. Well it did sort of but due to a zipcode mistake (last digit off by one) our large package entered into a loop between two local post offices and a postal distribution center in West Sacramento. This went on for at least a week as we tried to catch up with the package. We were running out of ideas when a call came in this morning from one post office telling us that the missing package was going to the other post office. We dashed over only to find it wasn’t there but might be out for delivery. We took turns camping out at Elle’s until the mail man arrived this afternoon. He went back and looked and sure enough the package was there and looking not too bad for all the extra travel and bumps it picked up.

We had a great time discovering all the good stuff and old clothes waiting inside. It was a great reminder of all the places we visited and some excellent xmas gifts that will be shared after all. We got some great help in spite of a system that could use some updating. I know a lot more than I ever wanted about package delivery now.

Whew!

Who knew one little digit could cause such a hassle

Not shown on this list is the time the package spent in southern California waiting for a new label. It got one but that had a zipcode error too…