Techno Solutions

One part of me wants to drop the whole techno part of this adventure and be completely free from electronics and communication systems. In the beginning, when we lay in the hammock behind our house and dreamt of travelling through Latin America, it wasn't the techno stuff we talked about, it was the freedom, the cultures, the landscape, the vagabond feeling. Unfortunately I am, or we both are, captured and addicted to modern technology, and above all, captured by the idea of being able to reach so many people through this homepage, people who give us feedback, support and help us when information is needed, or offer their spare bed if we pass through their part of the world. This is the result of the new age of internet, a tool I cannot imagine being without anymore. Five years ago, when I first started a pre-historic version of Internet Explorer, or was it Netscape, and lost my internet virginity, I called Bente and said this new tool was fantastic, but even if I cheered and welcomed it, I couldn't have foreseen the use we have had of the triple-w in the planning of this adventure.

So to be able to write for our homepage and MC-avisa, the Norwegian motorcycle magazine, to transfer photos faster than with traditional mailing system and not rely on scanning devices, and to communicate with family and friends, we jumped the band wagon and bought the whole enchillada, as they say. A digital camera, a laptop and a cd-burner, internet connection software, tele adapters, power adapters, chargers and cables, cd's and tons of software, far too much but we couldn't stop. Below is a list of what we purchased and what it does(there's no sponsoring involved here).

Digital camera and images:

• Nikon Coolpix 950 with 2.1 million Pixels resolution

  This tiny little electrical wonder goes ping and does all the fancy stuff you want it to. The little shiny cd-burner below is another wonder.

• * Tele- and wide angle adapters giving a 35mm equivalent zoom range of 24-230mm
• * External flash SB22 and bracket
• * Filterset with neutralizers, skylight and polarization
• Three or four sets of rechargable batteries
• Battery charger with 12V adapter
• * Extra Compact flash card of 64MB memory
• PCMCIA compact flash card adapter
• NikonWiev software for transferring images
• ACDSee image wiever, for ease of image storage on disk and cd
• Photoshop Pro image editing software

Laptop

• IBM Thinkpad 240, a subnotebook with 10.4" screen, 300Mhz, 6,4GB, 64MB ram, built in modem, by far good enough and very small, weighs only 1.3kg and measures as little as 26x20x2.7 cm
• * Long life battery
• 12V power supply for charging on the bike
• pcmcia network card and modem

CD-burner

• Panasonic KXL-RW10A ultra small mobile unit (size like a regular cd-man)
• Rewritable cd's
• CD creation software

More software

• Dreamweaver web page creation
• Microsoft office with Excel and Word
• ACDSee photo viewing program
• Paintshop Pro
• Norsk Språk (norwegian language huge dictionary)
• Clue English-Norwegian-English
• Spanish-English-Spanish
• Encarta world atlas
• IE and Outlook Express
• Netscape
• iPass connection software
• etc etc

* Bought in New York during our first week

The iPass is a world wide distributor of connection nodes for cheap internet access for the traveller. You must find a provider which uses iPass to subscribe. Basically they supply you, through the software you receive, with access numbers all over the world. You have to pay a surcharge for using it, but it's cheaper than any other solution that we know about.

At some stage in the trip, I will make a little report on the practical use of the system and where we went wrong or right.