I tried really hard to be lean and mean on the gadget
front. I remember the nightly hunt for
power to recharge all the toys in Patagonia and thought I would go for
something multifunctional. I worked out that my iPhone could do it all. There
are apps for ebooks, offline GPS maps, blogging, photography, translation and
you can even make phone calls apparently.
But when it came to it, an iPhone is not really that good if
you have no signal and putting all my eggs in one basket seemed risky. So I am
taking it (wrapped in a Mil-spec Gorilla case) and have specialist gear as
well.
Globebuster provide route notes each day with key junctions
and lat. and long. co-ordinates to important points like the car park of that
evening’s hotel. Everyone on the trip seems to be using the Garmin Zumo GPS so
I went for one of those. Mounted in the ‘bars in a lockable case and wired into
the bike’s electrics it is designed for use by bikers wearing gloves and is
fully waterproof. I’m taking maps as well but this should get me where I should
be going.
Sue bought me a Kindle for Christmas. The “Paperwhite” model
has 8 weeks of battery life and LED backlighting. I can fill it up with travel
books, Lonely Planet Guides, novels and my own .pdfs of useful information
without it getting any heavier. Nice.
My trusty Pentax Optima waterproof camera has done every
trip so far. Not as flexible as a digital SLR perhaps but smaller, easier to
use with no fuss and really high quality pics. A spare SD Card or two should
see me OK for 1,000+ photos. The iPhone camera will do for low-res images to
load on the blog.
My iPod has every piece of music I own on it so should last
the trip. Plus I’ve downloaded the complete back catalogue of Melvyn Bragg’s
“In our time” for educational purposes.
Most of these recharge through a USB so a Continental outlet
to USB adaptor and a Continental- Turkish and Continental-Chinese adaptor
should do the trick. Add in a USB outlet wired into the bike for when we are
“off grid” and I should be OK.
One last thing – an Odyssey high performance battery to
replace the BMW standard one on the bike. Perfect for cold starts and to power
all the toys!
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