Tuesday, April 22, 2008

home again


I am home. As a result of finishing up my travel laundry and having a full day at work, I have not yet had an opportunity to put any blog material together on my trip.


I had a great plan all mapped out. I took my iPaq and folding keyboard with me to keep an electronic travel journey. I was going to divide it into 14 installments of ready-made blog prose.


It turns out that it was a good idea I did not spend all the time to key in my meandering thoughts. Somewhere between Frankfurt and Portland, I lost my iPaq. I suspect it wanted to stay with the very fascinating TSA personnel in Denver, who decided they wanted to learn more about my possessions and me than any upstanding libertarian would allow.


So -- no ready prose. No presorted pictures. No two-week serial.


But later this week, I will reconstruct the trip -- even if this is not a cruise from (or in) Brazil site. Somehow, I will get it all back to Mexico.


To blatantly steal my good pal Juan Calypso's trademark closing: stay tuned.

6 comments:

Todd said...

Welcome Home!

Todd

Steve Cotton said...

Thank you, sir. It is good to be back.

Babs said...

Yee ha! YOu made it.......it's wonderful to travel but ALWAYS wonderful to get home......

Anonymous said...

Steve,

Glad you are back - looking forward to the report(s). The fact someone lifted your electronic note taker is really sad. You will have to rely on memory ;-0

Juan - I will Stay Tuned!aok

Steve Cotton said...

Babs -- Being home is good, but I am ready to find a new one.

Juan -- Reports starting soon. If I can develop a bit of discipline.

Hollito said...

Steve,

finally I can begin to read about your trip!
Wife left me on Sunday (no, not really - she works in the U.S. at the moment and just visited me for 2 weeks), I have a box of cold beer on the balcony, and tomorrow is an official holiday over here in Krautland. :-)

Sorry to hear you lost your Ipaq. :-(
When we were in MX the last time, for about 5 weeks, I found it extremely helpful to have a small "electronic brain" with me, it`s enough to make a few entries every day to recall the day for a better weblog description later...
If you think about getting another, I can recommend two devices from my own experience:

1. Palm M125
Has a SD card slot, so you can write nearly for months and years without getting out of memory.

Pro:Is powered by AA batteries, best is to use Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries, 2 in the device and 2 fully charged in your luggage. As they hold power for months and nearly do not discharge, this will last for a few weeks. Other pro: A used Palm M125 can be obtained cheap on Ebay or so. Device is small and light and can be carried in the pocket of your shirt. And if it gets lost or broken, it`s not a big financial loss.
Con: Only b/w. And you have to get used to "Grafitti", the kind of script it uses (but it is easy and works fine, or you can even attach a small, very cheap foldable keyboard)

2.QTEK 9100
I think this is sold in the U.S. as "T-Online MDA Vario", "Cingular 8125" and so on, but is always the same device, a HTC Wizard.
Just bought a used one a few days ago and love it! :-)
Pro: It has nearly everything: Touchpad, color display, keyboard, quadband phone, bluetooth (you can use it with a navigation software in you car!), WLAN (!),voice recorder and so on. It´s really nearly as good as a laptop. Mini SD card slot too, so no memory problems.
Con: Uses a LiIon battery (but you can buy a high capacity one for small money, and it can be charged on every USB connection). It´s a bit more heavy as a Palm, and a bit more bulky (as a cigarette pack).
And it´s a bit more expensive than a Palm...but not soooo expensive (well, on the other hand it replaces your cell phone - so it´s really worth a thought). Should be possible to get a new one for less than 200 US$...

Okay, ´nuff of this - now I will read your posts. :-)