Staying Connected on a Cycling Trip

Let me get one thing straight: we are not doing this trip to escape from reality, or to live off-grid, or to prove to ourselves that we can survive without any form of modern equipment. We want to stay in touch with our families, share our experiences with the world, and stay up to date on current affairs. We need a phone, and a camera, and a computer, and some storage. We’ll need to be connected. We’ll need to be smart.

In fact, we couldn’t just take both our MacBooks and DSLR’s, portable hard drives and all required cables and chargers. Our ‘life’ would have to be reduced, compacted, streamlined and made as light as possible.

So here we go, our ‘tech on tour’ list with a few notes on why:

MacBook Pro 13” – Alessia will need this. She’ll be doing a masters degree at the same time (because cycling across the world wasn’t enough of a challenge!) and I’m sure she’s not looking to be the first to submit a thesis via a tablet.

Ipad Air 2 – Alee from Cycling About swears that you don’t need a laptop to travel with and that everything, including running an extensive website, can be done via an iPad. My only concern was that Apple, being Apple, restricts compatibility and sharing options including reducing storage space to the size of your device.

Enter the Verbatim Media share Wireless. An impressive bit of kit that acts as a stand alone shell of a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive. Simply plug in any SD card, USB pen, or portable hard drive, connect Ipad or iPhone via wifi, open the designated app (or nPlayer) and start sharing, playing and copying any file until your heart is content. Simply put, this expands any iPad/phone’s internal storage to an infinite amount.

Next up was storage. Portable HD’s seemed to be the way to go, although my experience has always been mixed with them – I recall at least 3 that have died on me.. 1-2TB’s of data, all our photos, videos and thoughts on one drive… what if it failed? Imagine if we lost it all.

With current day tech letting us put 128GB or more onto a micro SD card, it made sense that we utilised this and stocked up on a few. They are tiny, can be stored safely on our body, and we can pick up more along the way if needs be. Last check, Amazon was selling Verbatim 128GB SDXC Micros for a quid over £20 – sorted.

We both have Kindles and iPod‘s, too. These will be loaded up with hundreds of books and songs, of which 90% we most likely wont even touch, but they will be there for passing time, relaxing and tuning out if needs be.

Happy Rolling,

Ross