Nashville Pilgrimmage: Tools in my travels

Published on Thursday, 11 November 2010 00:39

Written by Randy Garbin

When I originally decided to try making my travels into a vocation, about the only things I took along for the ride were a camera, a notebook, and a road atlas. This worked fine, except that back at the home office, I had gone very digital.

I produced Roadside with the latest personal computing equipment and software. I gathered up all that information and entered it into Filemaker databases when I returned. Sometimes, that process took days if not weeks, and often not at all as the distractions piled up. I would later discover untranscribed notes and unscanned images that might have come in handy had I had them readily available on the computer when I needed them.

If only, I thought, I could gather and digitize all that information in real time. The trip to Nashville provided an experiment of sorts, because never before had I hit the road armed with so much technology. If nothing else, I wanted to see how much better and more efficient the process would prove.

For this trip, I took the following hardware:

• Nikon D-​90 camera
• Eye-​Fi Explore X2 8 gigabyte + wifi memory card
• iPhone 4G
• Tom Tom GPS

On the iPhone, besides the default apps that come with the phone, I had the following apps specifically for this trip:

• Waze
• Trapster
• AAA Triptik (membership to AAA required)
• Yelp
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• Facebook
• Camscanner+
• Filemaker Go

Also, for listening to music and watching video at the motels:

• Pandora
• NPR News
• Netflix
• Air Video

I too love my iPhone

When it comes to a back-​roads excursion, the tremendous capabilities of the iPhone can actually dampen the simple enjoyment of the trip. On this venture, I didn’t bring my usual road trip journal, something that I brought with me on basically every trip, but as it happens, I couldn’t find it before I left the house. I mistakenly thought that the iPhone would more than compensate for not having an easy way to just jot down notes. Not so. Handling and entering information can get awkward, especially during an interview. You could record people talking to you, but that would also require later transcription and I suspect that this makes some people a little more reluctant to talk. I will not leave the house again without my journal.

Other than that, using an iPhone, you have the ability to take very high quality photos AND HD video. If properly mounted, you can even take in-​the-​car video, which I did on numerous occasions. This works fine for quickie web commentaries, but not so much for serious videography.

The iPhone is such a multi-​purpose tool, that I often found it distracting, and worse, I often forgot to enter in data at the most advantageous time. On the other hand, I now had the ability to make immediate updates to the Diner Finder, including photographs of the diners from remote locations. While this worked faster with high speed networks, using the Filemaker Go app saved me from missing a few diners I might have otherwise driven past.

Having the ability to surf the internet or access services like Yelp and even Foursquare I have to consider invaluable to someone who, like me, just enjoys wandering around with no particular agenda. You come to a small town or a city neighborhood, and you now have immediate access to a wealth of information (including the Diner Finder) regarding food, lodging, and entertainment.

I would not, however, rely solely upon Yelp or Google for these recommendations. I still think that in the end, nothing beats good local word-​of-​mouth, but at least you have the ability to cross check.

Lodging options are probably the most critical. As someone who had to sleep in my car one night outside of Pittsburgh, because I could find no available rooms in a fifty-​mile radius, nothing stresses me more than wondering if a good motel/​hotel lies just up the road and whether or not I can afford it. Sadly, the days of finding a reputable, clean independent motel outside of a tourist area have passed us by. If near a bigger city, then forget it. Your options then are either a bed and breakfast or a chain hotel.

B&B’s can certainly give you a cozy experience, but the better ones cost quite a bit and will usually require a reservation. Chain motels have the advantage of their various reservation networks, but most importantly, their ubiquity. I found the AAA Triptik app very useful for finding available rooms just up the road, but this only included AAA-​approved properties. The Google app supplemented this nicely, and in general worked very smoothly. I found it handy to drive to a hotel cluster, pull up all those hotels on a Google map, and then call each one of them for availability and rates before getting out of the car. What huge amounts of time and frustration this would have saved me five or ten years ago!

While on the road, I happened to hear about an app called Book​ing​.com. This iPhone app supposedly finds you hotels and books you a room without having to call around. I never put it to use, but it only seemed to list the pricier chains, like Marriott and the Holiday Inns.

For finding food, I still prefer to use my instincts. If I can’t find a diner, brewpub, or barbecue joint, then a quick glance at the building will usually give me enough information to give it a try. Still, Yelp and Google can come in very handy here as well. While in Bristol, Virginia, I needed only to find a good coffee shop with wifi that served a little food. Thanks to Yelp, I ended up at Java J’s, and found a perfect place to set up shop.

Not so smitten with AT&T

Living in the Philadelphia area, AT&T provides excellent coverage. Almost anywhere I go in the metro area and up through New York City, I receive a 3G signal providing I stay near major highways or in densely populated areas. Venturing out into “God’s Country” changes things considerably. While I had little problem with general voice coverage, data was another matter. I had hoped that I could take photos and video with the iPhone and immediately upload to my designated Flickr set using the Flickr app. This was mostly a crapshoot, especially in 2G areas.

The Flickr app worked fine in a wifi hotspot, but uploading a one minute video took ten minutes when it worked at all. The Flickr app often crashed. I often had to wait until I got to a hotspot before I could get those videos online, which negated the immediacy of the reporting. I have to consider this part of the experiment a failure, and I have to blame AT&T.

I didn’t drive through too many areas that had no coverage at all, but some parts of very rural Kentucky left me without service, as did some stretches of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I’ve traversed that road now using AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, and frankly, I can’t say any of those provides bullet-​proof coverage. I’d love to hear your experiences.

GPS, a miracle when it works

I’ve come to the conclusion that GPS tends to make you stupid. I first used it ten years ago when you could only get devices that attached to your PC, which made the experience cumbersome at best, especially if you had a passenger. However, even then I credited GPS for saving me once or twice from getting completely and almost hopelessly lost. I consider myself someone with a very good sense of direction, but at times, I can get disoriented, and GPS not only backs up your own sense of direction, but it provides a preview of what’s to come.

Unfortunately, when put into regular use, I find the GPS inhibits your understanding of the immediate geography, your lay of the land. The little screen takes you out of context. I used it, for instance, to help me find Joe’s Diner in downtown Cincinnati, and it did guide me around a traffic jam, but it also got a confused as I approached my destination. GPS told me at one point to turn the wrong way onto a one-​way street. Solving that problem hampered my ability to get my general bearings. Before GPS, I’d spend the time poking around, relying upon my sense of direction. If I made mistakes, at least I learned a little more about my surroundings. Now, I find myself listening to a computer generated voice giving me instructions I can’t necessarily trust.

I had three GPS methods at my disposal. On my iPhone I mostly relied upon the Waze app, which I’ve already reviewed a couple of versions ago. Since then, the program has improved greatly, but I still wouldn’t rely upon it to provide accurate turn-​by-​turn directions — not after plotting a route from Carlisle, Pennsylvania to Winchester, Virginia where it wanted me to get off and on at every exit on I-​81!

Waze shows better — though not perfect — utility in its ability to indicate traffic problems and cop sightings. Its integration with Foursquare also made it easier (and more fun) to report on your position back to friends.

The Tom Tom 510 GO unit also performed well and did an excellent job giving me ETAs and good routes to follow, but it too had its quirks which became oddly apparent during the last five miles of the trip. It not only chose a slower back road over the expressway for that leg, but worst of all, it got lost in my own neighborhood. These are devices that you should not completely surrender your own sense of direction and good judgement.

I also think TomTom’s map updating fees are exhorbitant — $40/​year. If you can justify the expense and love the unit, then fine, but in the age of iPhone, Google, etc., too many free alternatives exist that will do just as good a job.

Eye-​in-​Fi-​delity

I can’t rave enough about my new Nikon D-​90. With the demise of film photography, I waited longer than I wanted to replace my old Canon AE-​1 and assortment of lenses with another similarly capable camera, opting instead for a series of cheaper but easy-​to-​use digital point-​and-​shoots. Holding the D-​90 made me fall back in love with the craft. The camera has heft, which I missed, but it also takes better photographs than I thought I could take. I’ll leave the more in-​depth reviews to the dozens of other sites that have already covered this beautiful piece of machinery, but I will say that it made for a perfect camera for any road trip. Fast, responsive, and extremely versatile, the D-​90 sets the standard for serious-​but-​not-​quite-​professional photographers who want to document their travels.

I loaded the D-​90 with an Eye-​Fi card, which touts not only its ability to wirelessly upload your images to your computer via a wifi network, but also to geotag the images. Despite all the rave reviews I’ve read about Eye-​Fi cards, both of these features let me down. If you don’t stray far from your home or studio, then yes, the wireless uploading works beautifully. On the road, however, it disappointed me more often than not.

First, if you access a widely available commercial wifi network, like those you find at Starbucks, the card and its software works well. However, if you try this with a hotel’s wifi network that requires a room-​specific login to get past its encryption, then no go. You can use Eye-Fi’s own card reader, but that defeats the purpose.

The other main reason for my Eye-​Fi purchase — geotagging — works poorly in on a cross-​country road trip. Eye-Fi’s geotagging depends upon accessing local wifi networks and comparing their SSIDs against a database that contains that network’s location. No, Eye-​Fi doesn’t access the network itself, but can locate it on a map. In densely populated areas, this can work well, but in remote stretches, forget about it. Also, you have no visual indication whether or not Eye-​Fi successfully tagged the photo you just took, and if it did, you don’t know its accuracy until you get it into your computer.

While an Eye-​Fi card costs considerably less than a dedicated GPS geotagging device and does have the dual function as a memory card, I don’t see the value in it. If you have the extra cash, and you have a good reason to tag your images, buy a GPS unit for your camera (if one is available) and save money by buying a standard memory card.

The last mile

I don’t recommend anyone travel with two GPS screens in front of them, but on a future trip, I might likely forgo the dedicated TomTom unit and instead try the TomTom iPhone app. Having the iPhone mounted within easy reach of my steering wheel brought a world of utility and information to my finger tips. This part of the experiment, I loved.

However, I missed my simple paper notebook. I won’t ever leave that behind again. Also, I do still recommend carrying along a good road atlas, simply because the small iPhone or GPS screen does not allow you to see your location in a broader geographic context. You can’t really plot a route for yourself if all you’d really rather wander about the countryside, exploring the old roads.

Finally, be careful with this stuff. We already have plenty of idiots out there talking on their cell phones and worse, texting while driving. I did make some phone calls while driving, but I used the speaker on the iPhone and I didn’t talk for lengthy stretches while driving in heavy traffic through dense areas. I did try to stop if I had to take a call.

I would love to hear more about what you do when you travel the back roads. How do you record your trip? What are your best tips? Let us know and we’ll all become better back roads explorers.