Ok I’ve only been on the road less than a week, but I’ve learned a few things;
1) CAMPING – I’m not as good a camper as I thought I was. Since stretching my budget is dependent on camping most nights (at least while in the US), I need to improve this facet of my performance! I camped near Lake Erie and had some bitey things nipping at my ankles. They were only mildly annoying so didn’t bother pulling out the bug spray. The next two days I suffered with hundreds of red itchy bites around my ankles and up my legs, and I used up my full supply of anti-itch cream.
The incident with the storm (see above) was a good reminder not to trust weather forecasts, and not to camp (or park the bike under) trees, even if the weather seems good at the time.
2) FOOD AND HEALTH – I’m trying to work out how to maintain a healthy diet with food that’s cheap(ish) and readily available on the road. I’ll be a whale in no time if I eat 3 meals a day at diners. I’m thinking one main meal a day, snacks for the others and try to get some fruit or something for dinner. Good theory, haven’t been able to do it yet.
I’m missing my regular exercise routine. Normally I’d be exercising 5 days a week, split between gym and running. I’ve run once in the past week. For me being able to exercise is about doing it as part of a routine – I haven’t been able to figure one out yet. I’m going to try the YMCA gym in Sioux Falls this afternoon. I can get a monthly membership for $37 that will let me use Y’s around the country. Seems like that might be the way to go. If I can do that at least a couple of times a week I’ll be happy.
I haven’t had to worry about these things in the past – so what if you don’t exercise much on a two-week vacation? You can get back into it when you get home. But for a long-term trip you have to figure out how to integrate it into the lifestyle if you want to maintain a level of fitness.
3) TECHNOLOGY – I’m relying on 5 main pieces of tech (excluding camera gear). GPS (Garmin Montana), phone (iPhone 4 with AT&T), laptop (HP Elitebook 8470p), 3G USB dongle (Virgin Mobile) and SPOT 2. I’ve never used them all together before, so wasn’t entirely sure how it would work out. So far, so good.
The Montana is a very cool unit, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Learning as I go along. Main attraction for me was the large, bright screen. Easily readable in full sun. I’m using the free Open Street Maps (OSM) which are fine for the most part except the POI’s seem to be lacking. For instance, sometimes I can be right by a gas station but it will tell me the nearest one is 40 miles away. There may come a time when I’m desperate for the correct information on this! So considering buying the Garmin maps. Hope they are better?
Not much to say about the iPhone that hasn’t already been said, except that it’s still being paid for by (my former) work (I’m “on call”). If not for that I would jailbreak the phone so that I could turn it into a hotspot for the laptop. Or I could just pay ATT an extra $20/month, but that starts to get complicated with work paying for calls and email but not tethering. Anyway the Virgin USB is only $15 more and improves my coverage options. See below. When I get to Mexico, then I’ll have to jailbreak the phone to be able to use local SIM’s in it.
The USB broadband connection has worked surprisingly well, sometimes getting a connection where the phone couldn’t (because they are on different networks). So that broadens my spread of coverage. For example, I was able to watch Netflix on the laptop in the tent the other night, just using the USB connection. The night before, I didn’t have such a good connection but the phone did so I watched Netflix on that! (before you say I’m a loser for watching TV while camping – I agree  Will be interesting to see how that works as I get further west. EDIT: I forgot to mention, I was video chatting with friends and family in Vietnam and Australia – from inside my tent! How cool is that? Not like the old days, when a lone adventurer was, well, alone….
The laptop is a 14″/5lb 2.5Ghz Ivy Bridge CPU (so, the newest one). It fits well in the topbox and has a few layers of padding so I think it will travel pretty well. Also it’s in a bag that doesn’t look like your typical computer case, so hopefully that will make it less of a target for theft. I need the laptop for processing photos and running Basecamp for the GPS – if it wasn’t for those things I’d have a tablet instead.
The SPOT has been good so far, I have paid for tracking so I’m using it! But not sure if it would be just as effective with my pressing the “OK” button a few times a day. I set up an account at Spotwalla.com but doesn’t seem to be working, have to look into that a bit more.
Charging hasn’t been much of an issue so far, laptop goes 4 hours on a charge and can usually find somewhere to plug it in for an hour or two a day. I have a small inverter which will charge off the bike, but haven’t tried it yet. I’m not sure how much the laptop/inverter setup will draw on the bike battery, so reluctant to use it while the bike isn’t running. I can charge on the move though. Anyone know anything about how much draw a 150w inverter/65w power supply would pull from the bike battery?
4) THE BIKE – going well, as you’d expect, especially at this early stage of the trip.
I’ve been watching fuel economy pretty closely. I reset the AVG meter when I left DC, and for a while it was optimistic, as I’d expected. It always seemed that way in the past. I was getting an actual 42-43mpg early on, with the AVG on the computer being 44-45. Gradually though the two got closer together, until at 1500 miles they were exactly in sync at 41.2 MPG. What’s interesting is I’ve been able to use the AVE reading to see which way consumption is headed – it’s much easier to watch it go up or down by a tenth or two, than to look at the live readout, which goes all over the place. Economy is not what I’ve been used to getting – I guess the big load and the bigger screen (V-Stream medium) is taking a toll. Mileage is better on the backroads, and takes a dive on the interstate at anything over 70mph (actual GPS) speeds. Worst so far is 39mpg. Nothing we didn’t already know and another reason to stick to backroads whenever possible.
Oil consumption is minimal, maybe 100cc’s, not enough to bother topping up. Should make it through to an oil change in another 1500-2000 miles without a topup.
NEXT – heading the Badlands tomorrow – weather has cooled off so hopefully the Badlands won’t be so bad! Then to Yellowstone by next weekend.