Among the highlights of Road Trip 2009 was getting to be on hand for new cadet in-processing at the Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)After more than five weeks and 5,765 miles of driving through Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and very, very small parts of Arizona and Nevada, Road Trip 2009 is over.
This was the fourth year I've done this project, and I've now covered a fourth major region of the United States. In 2006, it was the Pacific Northwest; in 2007, the Southwest; in 2008, the deep South; and this year, it was the Rocky Mountain region. All told, my CNET Road Trips have taken me through 21 states and have covered 18,618 miles. And while there are 29 states I haven't visited yet (on Road Trip, at least), I feel like the projects have allowed me to see a great deal of our amazing country, including many of the back roads that most people don't get to see. And that is quite a privilege.
For me, there were many highlights this year. Any list of those (not exhaustive, of course, as that would be impossible in a story like this) would include being on hand for new cadet in-processing at the Air Force Academy; getting a chance to visit and explore the infrastructure of the underground fortress, Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station; visiting a group of Utah canyons and national parks I've been wanting to see for years; trekking to the great Utah Earthworks, the late Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and his wife Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels; getting to be the first reporter to see the completed solid rocket booster designed for future missions to the moon--and maybe Mars; walking the volcanic wonderland that is Craters of the Moon; driving through Montana's incomparable Glacier National Park; seeing the incredible downsides of decades of hard-core mining in Butte, Mont.; visiting a former Wyoming coal mine that has been reclaimed and turned into a huge wind farm; and, of course, fulfilling a years-long mission to explore the hot springs of Idaho.
The trip began, and ended, in Denver. But by the end, that felt like pure coincidence, especially as I returned to the Mile High City from a totally different direction than I had left it. Ultimately, though, I have to seriously tip my hat to Colorado's Rocky Mountain region. Coming from California, I always felt that the Sierra Nevada mountains were as good as it gets--in North America, at least. Now, I'm thinking I may have to reevaluate.
The technology
As always, Road Trip is also a chance for me to try out some of the latest tech gear. Among the gadgets I was testing out that I ended up using the most were Apple's latest 13-inch MacBook Pro; Nikon's D5000 digital SLR (complete with HD video); Inmarsat's BGAN satellite modem; Flip Video's UltraHD; Apple's iPod Touch; Amazon's Kindle 2; Verizon's MiFi 2200 mobile hot spot; Hewlett-Packard's OfficeJet H470; LiveScribe's Pulse pen; and of course, the Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV I drove for those 5,765 miles.
It may say 1,765 miles, but this is actually the final mileage for Road Trip 2009: 5,765.4 miles.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)When you're driving about 150 miles a day for more than five weeks, as well as doing three or four hours of daily reporting and an additional three or four hours of writing and photo processing, there's not a lot of time left for other things. And that includes trying out new technologies.
That means, of course, that some of the gadgets and technology I had brought with me never made it out of the bag. Among those are Sony's MDR-NC22 noise-canceling headphones and Adobe's Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.
I also didn't really get a chance to use Apple's iPhone 3GS much, at least beyond what my own personal iPhone 3G can do. I will say, however, that the 3GS is definitely much faster than the previous model, and if I wasn't locked into my 3G, I would likely upgrade now.
Getting online
As someone needing to do a fair bit of online research and, of course, file daily stories and photo galleries, the quality of Internet connectivity was constantly on my mind.
I stayed in 27 different motels during the course of the trip, and while almost all of them promised high-speed wireless Internet, my conclusion is that few were able to actually deliver on that commitment.
I don't know why I'm still surprised at that fact. After four years of doing these road trips, I guess I assume that by now, big hotel chains like Best Western, Holiday Inn Express, and so on will have figured out how to provide true high-speed Internet to their customers. Yet, again and again, my experience was of slow, barely usable connectivity. I guess my standards are too high.
The Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman road-tested on Road Trip 2009.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)That meant it was often a struggle to get my stories and photos out on time. Fortunately, cafes, restaurants, and libraries also offered Wi-Fi, and I always had access to Verizon's EV-DO network, though that, too, was often sub-standard in quality.
Wrapping up
So now Road Trip 2009 draws to a close, and I will get back to my usual reporting on all things geek culture, mainly from my office in San Francisco. But my thoughts are already turning to Road Trip 2010, which I believe will take me to the East Coast. So if you have thoughts on destinations that might make make sense for me to check out, please don't hesitate to let me know.
In the meantime, thank you so much to everyone who assisted me on this project, be it the many public affairs representatives who took time out of their busy schedules to accommodate me, or my editors, who often had to be cleaning up my words late at night.
ASPEN, Colo.--One thing I love is finding uses for things that perhaps no one has thought of before.
I'd already been on Road Trip 2009 for several days when I arrived in this tony Colorado mountain town known best as a playground for the rich and famous. I was hoping to go for a walk and find something good to eat.
It had been a long day of driving, starting in Colorado Springs, and traveling over Independence Pass, a 12,095 "Top of the Rockies" spot just on the Continental Divide. I had planned to stroll around Aspen for a bit and then use my iPhone to get online and find something inexpensive for dinner.
But I had neglected to charge the iPhone, and by the time I got to town, the battery was more or less dead. This is Road Trip, however, and as someone carting around a car full of high-tech gear, I was determined to find a workaround.
Though it is designed to provide a hot-spot for as many as five people in one place, the Verizon MiFi 2200 allowed CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman to create a mobile Wi-Fi connection for an iPod Touch as he walked around Aspen, Colo.
(Credit: Verizon)One of the gadgets I am road-testing is a 32GB iPod Touch, a device that, if it has access to a Wi-Fi connection, can do much of what the iPhone can do. But on a walk around a town you don't know, it's hard to count on finding such a connection, especially these days when most people password-protect their Wi-Fi.
However, I also am carrying Verizon's MiFi 2200 mobile hot spot, which converts the carrier's EV-DO signal into a Wi-Fi connection that up to five people can share. I had already used the MiFi to provide a signal for the iPod Touch at the very beginning of the trip so that, while sitting on a boarding airplane, I could download a large file from iTunes.
Now, I realized that by turning the MiFi on and sticking it in my back pocket, I could become, in essence, a walking hot spot, allowing me to get online on the iPod Touch, no matter where I was in town. That meant that I could use the Skype app to make a phone call, run several other apps for one reason or another, and look up good places to eat using the device's browser.
Of course, this is the kind of workaround that isn't going to make sense for most people. If you're going to bother paying for an iPod Touch and a MiFi, you might as well just get an iPhone. But if you're road-testing a number of tech gadgets and you see a way to jerry-rig something to solve a problem, why not do it?
It turns out that it's hard to find decent, inexpensive food in Aspen. But thanks to being able to get online while I walked around, I did end up at a terrific place where I had a good, moderately healthy meal for under $20.
And, since I became a walking hot spot, I was also able to get online on my computer, as well, meaning that I was able to actually do some work while I ate, despite the fact that the restaurant where I found that inexpensive meal didn't offer Wi-Fi.
In the end, one thing puzzled me, though. When I first linked the iPod Touch to the MiFi connection, I tried to locate myself using the device's map feature. But instead of pinpointing where I was in Aspen, it told me I was somewhere in Virginia. I thought that was odd, but I chalked it up to the fact that without a GPS chip, it figures out its location relative to the Wi-Fi signals it finds. Given that the MiFi is a loaner, I thought that maybe it had come from Virginia.
Later, however, when I returned to my car and got ready to head out, I plugged in my iPhone and again, with some power, tried to see if it, with GPS, it could locate me. Oddly, though, the iPhone also told me I was in Virginia.
My only conclusion for the fact that both devices told me this: that the folks in Aspen have figured out some way to trick Google Maps so as to keep out the hoi-polloi. But maybe it was something else. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
OAKLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT--When I wrote to Verizon, asking for a MiFi 2200 mobile hotspot review unit for my upcoming Road Trip 2009 project, the response I got back was, basically, "Why would you want that?"
The MiFi operates on Verizon's EV-DO network, and converts that mobile broadband signal into a Wi-Fi signal that up to five people can use. So the question really was, Why would I, one person, find useful an Internet connectivity technology designed for multiple people?
I've just started using the device, so I've hardly scratched the surface of its potential, but here's one reason why.
Using a Verizon MiFi 2200 makes it possible to download large audio files on an iPhone via Wi-Fi.
(Credit: Verizon)I boarded my flight to Denver to begin Road Trip--my annual journey through a region of the United States in search of the most interesting destinations there to write about and photograph--and decided I wanted to use my iPhone to download one of the terrific TED talks to listen to during the flight.
The problem was that the file was more than 10 megabytes, and the iPhone will only let you download files that big if you're on a Wi-Fi network. Now, I've been using Verizon's EV-DO technology for some time, and I love it, but the plug-in EV-DO cards only provide connectivity to your computer. Technically, I suppose, you could turn on Internet sharing on the computer and create a Wi-Fi signal that way, but that's an awful big hassle.
Instead, because I had a MiFi with me--an amazingly small device that looks much more like a thin piece of chocolate than a great new technology--I was able to quickly create a Wi-Fi hotspot and satisfy the iPhone's needs.
Next thing I knew, as the plane prepared to depart our gate, I was in a race against time, trying to download the entire 55 megabytes before they closed the door and required everyone to turn off their phones.
Well, let's just say that I was able to get the entire file onto the phone. I won't comment on whether the door had already closed.
To me, this is very big leap forward. Being able to turn on a personal hot spot like that, without needing to pull out the computer, opens up a ton of possibilities. I love my EV-DO card, but it's unwieldy to the point of being annoying. It sticks out of the side of my computer, works only with the laptop and on some machines, requires Verizon's VZAcess Manager software. The MiFi, by comparison, can fit in your shirt pocket and offer up Wi-Fi at the push of a button.
Frankly, I don't think its utility depends in any way on multiple people using it. Here, by myself on a plane about to take off for Denver, I've already proved--to myself at least--that MiFi is a technology perfectly suitable for one.
For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
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