Gadgets, gadgets, gadgets ...

Technical gadgets are equally fun and painful during the preparation phase of the trip. Playing around with GPS, GPS-tracker, intercom and net-book gets us excited for finally going on the trip. And for sure they will be much fun on the trip, if they work properly. And exactly this is my problem, getting them to function properly.

But finally we're getting there. The GPS-tracker arrived in Vientiane last week after it was tested thoroughly in Switzerland. This fun device should make it possible to track our location along the route and should send our coordinates to a communication satellite. Finally I managed to also integrate the widget into this blog! Besides, it lets us send of emergency messages, just in case something really bad happens. Quite handy. The netbook is now set up and ready to use. This way we don't need to take guide books with us, but can look everything up in the computer. After several hours of troubles setting it up properly, I decided to take it to a Vietnamese run computer shop in Vientiane. The staff fixed the problem in 2 hours and charged me 20,000 KIP (= less than 4 USD). I should have gone for this option right from the start!

Finally, after many hours of fiddling around, we've got it almost everything properly set up. Boris modified the bike-electrics completely, so that we are now also able to recharge our fun devices via the motorbike battery while riding. And he found the "mute"-button on our intercom, which means he can put me on mute if I talk to much. Lets hope the Chinese will not take any of our dear gadgets away at the border crossing.

The last hurdle to go over will be loading the OSM Open Street Maps onto our GPS devices. Why does Garmin have so proprietary formats and bad documentation!!!! This drives even a most dedicated gadget-tinker insame!