From Singapore I flew with the bike to Auckland, NZ. I made every effort to travel light and apart from my bike I was only carrying 6kg of luggage, which essentially comprised of spare clothing, bike spares, camera, mobile phone and Psion 5.
On the issue of the Psion 5 and Mobile phones, we have reached one of my fetishes!
Before I went travelling I purchased a Psion 5 (this is a palmtop computer which is compatible with windows 95/98) and an Ericsson SH888 mobile phone connected to Vodafone. The palmtop computer is quite delicate and I use a hard plastic case to protect it. The Psion uses 2 'AA' batteries to power it while the mobile phone uses a rechargeable battery. The total weight of the phone, phone recharger, Psion 5 & Psion 5 case is ~800g (just under 2 lb).
The Psion is a superb tool which has a built in variety of applications such as word processor, spreadsheet, alarm, diary and contact database as standard. An e-mail and web client is also available free of charge but this needs to be downloaded from www.psion.com to a PC then transferred to the Psion (the Psion comes with applicable software and cable allowing it to be connected to a PC). Thus while I was travelling I was able to compose e-mails. To send and receive emails the Psion can be connected to the internet in 3 ways:
While travelling I used an Ericsson SH888 dual band mobile phone which has a built in modem. This setup was very neat as the Psion 'talks' to the mobile phone via an infrared port.
The last piece in the jigsaw is the mobile phone service provider. I used the mobile phone while travelling with an Orange and Vodafone connection (I found Orange to be far superior). When you purchase the mobile phone, you need to request the service provider to:
While travelling I would collect my e-mail by dialling in to my service provider. I visited the following countries while travelling and was easily able to send and receive my e-mail in each:
It was possible to dial the UK to collect my e-mail but this was an expensive option. To lower costs I purchased an Internet connection for each country I visited (I was able to buy low cost services where I was charged only for my time online). For a traveller visiting a country for a short period of time it may be cheaper to purchase an ISP connection in the UK from a provider who offers an iPass account. An iPass account allows you to dial in to a local point of presence to collect your e-mail & browse the web for a small hourly surcharge (i.e. if you were in Auckland, NZ you would call the local NZ telephone number). The obvious advantage of this is that you are only paying for a local rate call which is generally far cheaper than an international call.
A major benefit of the Psion is that you are able to compose and read e-mails while 'offline', thus my average time connected to the Internet was only 2 minutes to send and receive my e-mail.
Overall I found using a mobile phone and palmtop computer a superb way of keeping in touch & I recommend it to anyone wanting to keep in touch while travelling. The only downside is that you can only collect your e-mail while in mobile coverage and this was a problem on the west coast of NZ when I was out of range for 5 days.
The cost of buying your own mobile office would be approx.:
Orange is recommended as I found they had the best roaming agreements, lowest call charges & technically superior but it is hard to purchase an Ericsson SH888 connected to Orange. Vodafone are fine but the cost of receiving a roaming call while abroad was far more expensive than orange.
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I use the Avocet Vertech altimeter. I have had this watch since 1994 and found it very reliable (in relation to telling what altitude you are at) for cycling, skiing and mountaineering. It has several neat features including:
The watch I used in NZ failed because the battery died (the batteries die every 2 years and need to be sent back to the manufacturer for replacement). My only concern with the Vertech is the rubber buttons. My first watch had one of the buttons fall off after a year. I had the watch repaired free of charge under guarantee but a button fell off the second one. This was again fixed free. My third watch failed with water penetration. It was again replaced free. I am now on my 4th watch!
Copyright Craig MacAlpine and OCD Cycloclimbing/UK - April 1999