What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Pt. 1

Yes, it felt a little like that kind of trip. The one you took with your family becuase family was a total “No child left behind” kind of thing. This report isn’t going in front of the class, it’s being presented as a byway on the highway to real digital freedom.

Actually, I was trying to detach myself from things digital, at least for a few days. It turned out to be less than an ideal choice, but it certainly did bring out those things where we’re a lot better off than we used to be. This is part one of The REAL Vacation Saga-

Let’s go back to square one.

Here we have me, trying to plan my packing in advance. I know you’ve been there. Don’t avoid looking me in the eye, it just isn’t going to work. As soon as you get where you’re going, you discover at least a half dozen things that were left lying about the house. Those items are: 1) Critical to the trip, 2) Impossible or ttoo expensive to replace, and 3) Something you were just sure you wouldn’t be stupid enough to forget. Oh, well.

I’m proud to say that in my case, I forgot only three things and only one was terribly important. That one was my laptop, of course. It wasn’t forgotten, simply needed and deliberately left home. That was my ‘moment of enlightenment’, if you will. I won’t make the same mistake twice. I didn’t want to be chained to the keyboard, I wanted a REAL vacation. What I failed to get was just how useful a laptop can be on a REAL vacation. Let’s run down the obvious (and not so obvious) reasons for bringing it along:

1) The obvious- driving directions and maps. Even wit billions of our tax dollars ‘hard at work’ (as they like to remind us), the usefulness of the average interstate road sign is somewhere between minimal and a total loss. This is especially true around major urban hubs, where you may have 6 or 8 lanes of traffic about to split 4 ways at the same time. Then there’s this cute way they have of ‘overlapping’ exit lanes. One lane may end up serving to take you in totally different directions based on the phase of the moon and the date of your last dentist visit. A laptop’s clear map and directions may be your only lifeline. This goes double in bad weather, when you may not even be able to READ the misleading road signs (oh, yes, MISLEADING- you know who you are!). In any case, there are at least two major map-and-drive packages out there. Try to get some exposure to each, since there are differences in the way they cover things you can’t usually see on a map. I’m not going to cover Microsoft or DeLorme here, since that presents a whole article (or two) worth of infromation.

2) Entertainment value- Road trips can be fun. That fun factor diminishes rapidly in inverse relation to the vacationer’s age. Dealing with a seven-year-old, as we were, a laptop with a few games on it can go a long way to filling in low spots left by mom and dad wanting to see “The Biggest Rutabaga in the World!”. To paraphrase Licoln- you can please some of the people some of the time, but…

3) Keeping an eye on pennies- There was a time when we weren’t worried about the cost of gas and how much it took to get from here to there. That was a LONG time ago. These days, a simple Excel spreadsheet will let you keep an eye on the money as it runs out the hole in your wallet. If your vacation includes a budget, this is really an important item. For those who care enough, it also lets you keep an eye on the overall gas mileage.

One last note in this first part of the report is that a Wi-Fi card is ever-so-slowly becoming a good idea. It’s far from perfect, but gives you options you didn’t have, before. And as we all know- options are a Good Thing.

Part 2 - After the Recovery