On Road Trip 2006, I traveled through the U.S. Pacific Northwest, stopping at destinations such as Grand Coulee Dam, Google's Columbia River server farm, and the McMinnville, Ore., home of Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose. During Road Trip 2008, I will journey through the Deep South.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)SAN FRANCISCO--Over the 8,260 miles I've driven on Road Trip 2006 and Road Trip 2007, I've visited, written about, and photographed some of the most interesting destinations in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.
I've also gotten to road-test some really cool gadgets and drive the spiffy and comfortable Infiniti QX56 over some long and very hot distances.
Now I'm getting ready to depart on Road Trip 2008. This year, rather than leaving from my home base in San Francisco, I'll be flying east and starting a grand tour of the Deep South in Orlando, Fla., on June 10.
Last year's trip through the U.S. Southwest was hot, but at least it was dry. This time around, as I meander through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, it's going to be both hot and humid. But at least it will be early summer--as opposed to the middle--and the review 2008 Outback 2.5 XT Subaru is providing will be properly air-conditioned.
Last year, I had the good fortune to indulge my inner geek and drop in on some sights and sites I'd long wanted to visit. Among them were the Grand Canyon Skywalk; the incomparable Hoover Dam; the gargantuan meteor crater near Winslow, Ariz.; an amazing collection of vintage commercial and military airplanes in Tucson, Ariz.; the only existing Titan Missile museum in the world; the Top Gun school; a community of off-the-grid sustainable living houses called Earthships; and majestic canyons in Arizona and Utah.
In Las Vegas, I got to walk under the Strip while slogging through a series of graffiti-filled tunnels. I also went on backstage tours of two Cirque du Soleil shows, Ka and Love.
One great thing about my road trips is that I often get behind-the-scenes tours not generally available to the public. An example was a tour last summer through parts of Hoover Dam that have been off-limits to the public since September 11.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)This time around, I'll be making the Cirque part of the experience once again when I go backstage at La Nouba, Cirque du Soleil's long-running Disney World show.
Being in Orlando, of course, no trip would be complete without a lengthy journey through Disney World, and I'll certainly be doing my part.
I'll also be on hand--if the stars align--for the landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery after its trip to the International Space Station.
I haven't finalized my itinerary yet--I will likely be turning to you, dear readers, for some suggestions--but other destinations I know I'll be hitting will be Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala.; UPS' world distribution center and the Louisville Slugger bat factory, both in Louisville, Ky.; the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky.; Graceland, in Memphis, Tenn.; Johnson Space Center, in Houston; Fort Benning, in Columbus, Ga.; New Orleans, for a look at the city's post-Katrina recovery, or lack thereof; the Everglades; and more.
As in the previous two years, I will also be carrying around a passel of high-tech gadgetry to test on the road.
The Grand Canyon Skywalk, which juts out over the Colorado River, was a destination on Road Trip 2007.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)One goal of the trip is going to be seeing which cell network has the best 3G Internet service. As such, I'll be using Verizon's USB727 and Sprint's Compass 597 EVDO cards. I'll also have an Apple iPhone, which, of course, features AT&T's Edge network service. While I won't be able to do it every day, I intend to try tests of each network's service in several selected locations to see which one is best.
Apple has also lent me a MacBook Air to try. I'm already well-versed with Macs, as I use a MacBook Pro every day for work. But the Air will be my first test of a computer that relies almost entirely on the Internet--with the exception of input via USB--for its incoming information. Whether this will be a successful test is unclear, but I know I will be happy to be carrying a much lighter machine with me.
Another device I'm looking forward to trying is the Dash Express car navigation system. This is car GPS geekery at its best, a truly interactive system that allows users to send addresses and other data to the device from their computers, and to share data with other users.
At the end of long days of driving, writing, and processing photos, I'll need downtime, and Showtime and HBO have given me DVD sets of Weeds and Oz, respectively. I expect to spend many late-evening hours in front of the MacBook Air--with its external SuperDrive--watching them.
The Titan Missile Museum, near Tucson, Ariz., is the only restored Titan missile silo in the world. I visited the site during Road Trip 2007.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)Last year, I carried my personal Canon Rebel XT and used a couple of lenses Canon lent me. This time around, I'm going to use a loaner Nikon D60 digital SLR and several lenses, including the stock 18-55mm, as well as a 16-85mm and a 70-300mm.
That's for still images. For video, I'm going to be using two systems. The first is the Flip Ultra, the latest model from Flip Video. This gadget will allow me to shoot quick footage and upload it quickly to the Internet and this blog.
In addition, I'll be using Qik's new service. This is live, streaming video from a Nokia smartphone. Qik will allow me to broadcast streaming video from just about anywhere, and then make it possible for viewers to send instant messages while the video is playing. This will be very useful, as it will make it possible for some of the interviews I do during the trip to be interactive. You will be able to view my Qik channel both on the Road Trip package main page, and on my personal Qik page.
By using service from Qik, I'll be able to stream live video to the Internet and make it possible for viewers to interact with me.
(Credit: Qik)Using technology like Qik's is key this year, as one of my goals is to make the trip much more interactive than it's been the past two years. Exactly how that will manifest is still not entirely clear, but there are definitely a few things I know will make it more user-friendly than in the past.
First, I'll be Twittering constantly. You can follow my Twitter feed here.
Another thing I'll do at least a couple of times, if not more, is organize meet-ups along the way. I'll likely announce them on this blog and on Twitter.
I also have some gifts to give away--DVDs from Showtime, video games, one or two iTunes gift cards, and possibly some CNET swag. I'm still working out precisely how I will give this stuff away, but much of it will be based on reader interactivity. As I mentioned above, I'll be asking for some suggestions on things to visit during the trip, and I will likely reward those with the best advice.
Further, I'll be trying out reader-submitted photo galleries. After a week of the trip, I will likely post a blog entry going back over the places I've visited and ask for readers' photos of those places. Then I'll put up a gallery of the best of those images, giving the photographers credit, of course.
To top it off, I may simply ask readers for ideas for adding even more interactivity. I want to bring you along with me, if not in my car, then at least on the Internet.
I'll also be podcasting from the road, blogging constantly of course, and in general, trying to document the trip in as many ways as I can.
All told, I expect to cover nearly 5,000 miles in a large loop out of Orlando. The past two years, I drove almost 200 miles per day, and I don't expect that to be much different this time. I hope you'll come along for the ride.
One of my last stops on Road Trip 2007 was a visit to the Fallon Naval Air Station, in Fallon, Nev., home to the famous Top Gun school.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)
The Y.M. Wealth, a container ship flagged in Liberia goes under the Golden Gate Bridge on its way from Los Angeles to the Port of Oakland.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)MARIN HEADLANDS, Calif.--This is very surreal.
I'm sitting on a bench on top of a cliff here, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and looking straight at the Golden Gate Bridge.
For the last 15 minutes, there has been a steady stream of sirens from emergency vehicles, and I can see that all traffic on the bridge is completely stopped. I Twittered what I was seeing, and almost immediately, one of my followers replied with details of what seems to be a multiple-vehicle accident blocking most of the lanes on the bridge.
Before this happened, I was planning on starting this blog entry by writing that life is very good because here I am sitting in such a magical place, and I'm getting to do work from here.
But seeing and hearing what I know is some sort of tragedy has dampened my spirits a bit.
Still, it is a truly magnificent place to be, and I'm able to sit here and blog because I'm road testing a bunch of gadgets for my upcoming Road Trip 2008.
That trip, which will begin on June 10 in Orlando, Fla., is this year's version of Road Trip 2007, my journey around the U.S. Southwest. This year's voyage will take me around the American South, visiting a series of destinations and attractions, such as Disney World, the Corvette Factory, Space Camp, the Kennedy Space Center, and more. I'll also be carrying a bunch of gadgets with me.
On Wednesday, I spent most of the afternoon at the only restored Nike missile site in the United States.
A Nike Hercules surface-to-air missile at the only restored Nike missile site in the United States. The site is in the Marin Headlands, near Sausalito, Calif. The missile could carry a nuclear warhead of up to 40 kilotons.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)I will be posting a full story and photo gallery on this, most likely on Friday, so stay tuned for that.
Suffice it to say, it's quite a thing to realize that just a few miles from San Francisco there were several active sites capable of firing nuclear-tipped missiles at incoming bombers or other threats.
As my tour guide mentioned, many people from San Francisco had no idea that the site even existed, and being from the city myself, I can attest to the truth of that statement.
After I finished my tour, I pulled out my gadgets--an Apple iPhone and two EVDO modems, a Verizon USB727, and a Sprint Compass 597. The idea was to test which had the best connectivity out here in the middle of one of the most spectacular pieces of land in the world.
Sprint's Compass 597, an EVDO modem that I will be using on Road Trip 2008
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)At first, just above the Nike site, only the iPhone got any kind of signal. It was spotty, but I was able to load a Web site containing information on Nike missiles. The Sprint and Verizon modems had no signal at all.
So I decided to move on and drove over the hill until I ended up where I am now. I stopped here because it was the first place with an open view of San Francisco, but which was still very much in the Headlands.
After getting the Apple MacBook Air I'm also using on Road Trip out, I processed some photos and began plugging and unplugging the EVDO modems into the computer. It quickly turned out that, because I am in plain view of San Francisco, both are producing high-speed connectivity.
The iPhone, however, seems to be performing rather sluggishly.
Another thing I wanted to do while I was here was see if I could use the Internet to figure out the provenance of a huge container ship that was sailing under the bridge.
Seeing the name of the shipping company emblazoned on its side, Yang Ming, I figured I could do a quick Google search to discover shipping traffic information.
What I ended up finding out is that in order to get that kind of information, you have to be a member of the Maritime Exchange of the San Francisco Bay Region.
But, pulling out my reporter card, I called the exchange and the nice man on the other end of the phone told me that the ship is called the Y.M. Wealth, is flagged in Liberia, and was on its way into the Port of Oakland after sailing from Los Angeles. He couldn't tell me the cargo, other than that it was carrying a lot of containers--duh--or where it would be heading next.
The Verizon USB727, another EVDO modem I will be using on Road Trip 2008.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)Anyway, the bridge is still totally blocked, the view is still otherwordly, and the technology that is allowing me to share that all with you is rather impressive.
Please keep watching this space for both my story on the Nike missile site and for the entire Road Trip.
Using Wi-Fi, I was able to download software needed to run the Verizon USB727 EVDO modem on loan for Road Trip 2008.
(Credit: Verizon Wireless)SAN FRANCISCO--One of the cool things about going on road trips for CNET News.com, as I've done in both 2006 and 2007, is that I get to test out a bunch of cool tech.
For the trip I'll be embarking on next month, that is very much the case, and one of the gadgets I've been looking to get going is the USB727 EVDO modem Verizon lent me for the trip.
The only problem has been that until today, I had been unable to get the modem to work properly. I had been told it was essentially plug and play on Macs, like the USB720 modem I bought myself, but that wasn't proving to be true.
I got back in touch with Verizon, hoping it was a simple fix, and after waiting a few days for the right tech person to get ahold of the question, I was finally told that the USB727, unlike the USB720, doesn't natively support Macs.
This struck me as a problem, since the computer I'm going to be using on the trip is a MacBook Air that Apple has lent me.
So I was sitting in my car here in San Francisco, waiting for the annual Xbox 360 games showcase event to start, trying to figure out what to do. I had my personal MacBook Pro connected to the Internet with the USB720, and in came an e-mail from Verizon suggesting that to get the USB727 running on the MacBook Air, I needed to download some driver software.
How to do it, I thought. Well, it turned out there is an open Wi-Fi network where I'm sitting, so I quickly logged the MacBook Air on to that and, a few fits and starts later, downloaded the driver software.
Then, shutting down the Wi-Fi, I ran the activation software for the USB727. At first it failed, and I was just about to send a message back to Verizon complaining that they still didn't have it right when I decided to make one more try. And suddenly, voila! The MacBook Air was on the Internet.
So here I am, still sitting in the car, pounding out this blog entry on the MacBook Air using the USB727 modem.
And the point, I guess, is that despite worrying that I was going to have to wait until I got home to connect an external Superdrive to the MacBook Air and try to load the software off the CD Verizon sent me with the modem, I didn't end up having to do so at all.
That proves to me, for the moment at least, that Apple's claims that the MacBook Air can be used without the need for an internal optical drive are valid.
On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I'll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South's most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I'm doing on Twitter.
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