Goin’ Travelling 1983 vs 2007

I'm in a SFO airport hotel with my wife and kids, the night before embarking on "Leg 1" of our 'round the world' journey. So, after the "beta" posts below, I finally get to write my first "real" blog post. And I've been thinking a lot about it.

This is the third time in my life I've done a significant trip. The first was with my folks and sister in 1966, when I was three going on four years old, an eight week to Europe adventure. I remember very little of it, castles in Portugal, getting upset when my folks would not buy me a sword after the bullfight in Madrid. I've always been a bit upset since that my folks wasted a trip like that on me when I was so young. Gives me more than a hint of what my four year old daughter will be experiencing…

The second trip was in 1983, after graduating from UCSD. Eight weeks with a buddy, an amazing time, at that point, truly a trip of a lifetime. Touring, carousing, drinking, all on less than $40 bucks a day for food , lodging and entertainment!!! Even that trip is a bit different with perspective. I was just out of school, 20 years old, and my parents let me go off solo. Now that my oldest daughter is almost twelve, the concept of letting somebody under thirty go off on their own for eight weeks seems inconceivable!

Jeff's Europe Trip 1983: No cell phones, no computers, no affordable phone calls. "Connectivity" as we now know it did not exist. It was basically me, a duffel bag (no wheels), a point and shoot 35MM camera, and a few rolls of film. I think the only other 'electrical device' that I had with me was a Norelco electric razor!!! I had a personal "blog", called a diary. The only time in my live I'd ever kept a diary, I probably kept notes for about half the trip and haven't seen it since.

Skip twenty-four years forward to the trip that my wife, three daughters, and I are leaving for tomorrow. The entire trip is infused with technology. For me, it's been a lot of fun, frustration, and hurling abusive language at my computer to get ready for the trip. Being an exec at a Fortune 500, you get accustomed to having an IT department sort everything out. However, for my trip, I wanted to go "solo"---and embarked on an path that had me hopefully in a miniscule way catch up to all the stuff that the teens and twenty somethings have been doing on line for years!

So, the Tech Side of Jeff's trip 2007 (i.e. the Belk's tech arsenal):

• Purchase of Toshiba U205 Laptop---Great Machine. Has Vista Home Premium on it. I'm going to be charitable at this point, and NOT relay what it's like to be at the edge of the Vista upgrade cycle
• Bought a black MacBook for my wife. Like our other home Macs, this has been a pleasure, and has kept my wife (nicely of course) snickering and "I told you so'ing" as I've been fighting with having to upgrade my home wireless network because Vista would not support older Linksys routers, or hours with Toshiba tech support because Vista would lose the Toshiba's DVD drive…oops I started…enough of that for now
• Canon S3IS Digital Camera (prosumer, just below their SLR's) great camera
• Canon S600 (pocket camera for me)
• Canon S500 (for my daughters)
• Canon Elura compact DV camera (see a brand preference trend here?)
• Two Unlocked Cell Phones (buying prepaid SIM's overseas is about 1/10^th the cost of roaming charges
• One Blackberry (3G with QC chip) on Cingular's International Plan (great deal $69.95 a month for int'l Blackberry service)
• Cingular HSDPA Card (with QC Chip of course), on Cingular's $139/month international plan…Hopefully not too painful, although some of the roaming costs look, shall we say "consumer challenged", especially since I am paying the freight and not my employer.
• One Wireless Enabled PSP with lots of games and movies (for middle daughter)
• Three iPods (30gig iPod (don't know which gen), 6GB iPod Mini, 4GB iPod Nano
• Assorted headphones, adaptors, extra battery for Toshiba, AV cables, USB cables
• Bag of extra SD cards (1GB high speed), two 2GB jump drives for backups
• Then there is the other side of connectivity---the tools of the trip:
  • Family Website –my wife is working that one
  • Blog---this, my first blog
  • Skype in and Skype out accounts
  • Yahoo messenger with Voice
  • Slingbox drivers to run our Slingbox from around the world
  • Microsoft Student with Encarta for the kids

And my wife is going through the same transition…learning iWeb, learning Squarespace. Not pretty for her either, but her use of language is more circumspect than mine.

So that's all for now. Hopefully this stuff all works, hopefully I don't bounce my computer and make all my tribulations for naught. Hopefully no bad guys decide to feast on our luggage or electronics while we are in hotels (more worried about Europe than Asia). Hopefully my wife, kids, and I will still like one another after months in hotel rooms, and almost two months near the equator nearing summer. Hopefully United Airlines behaves (since I've been 1K or premier exec since 1994 this is more than an idle fear). Hopefully everybody stays healthy. To quote our recently departed Kurt Vonnegut…so it goes…

 

 

Comments

[dick]

we need updates on a more regular and consistent basis

[SeeShell]

I scrolled down to write how impressed I am that you update your blog fairly regularly, considering you're a nomad for now. Had to laugh when I saw the first comment on your post!
...Sounds like you guys are having an amazing time. It's fun to read your musings.