Date: 2013-02-10
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Let's talk about electronics. I am the least likely person to want to talk electronics that you can imagine. Like Sgt. Schultz---"I KNOW NOTHING!" Seriously, I am technologically impaired. Partly it's that I just don't like electronic gadgets aesthetically, if that doesn't sound too pretentious. They just bug me with their metallic-ness and their tiny little buttons, with their beeps and dings, their hard edges and little lights, their constant dead batteries, lack of signal, and warning messages. They definitely don't have a soul, or even any softness, warmth, or fuzziness. They are alien to me, they are Other.And partly it is because I am intimidated by them, because I KNOW that I don't understand them. I don't understand how everybody but me just seems to intuitively understand how to rapidly punch a mystifying series of buttons to make these gadgets do amazing things. Where did you all learn all this stuff?? It wasn't taught in school, or else I missed that day. And I don't seem to have the desire, or the patience, to want to learn it now. And, seriously, I am fine with being a low-tech girl. I can use what I want and need to use in my real life, which is my cell phone (I can make calls and send texts, and even check my email on my silly phone) and the computer at work (I am a nurse and do ALL of my charting on the computer!) and the laptop at home (email, facebook, and google odd bits of trivia.) Oh, and I do run a home business, but my husband is the IT guy. I am low-tech in my hobbies too--hiking, kayaking, playing the dulcimer, and weaving on a big floor loom. Not a computer chip among them, except, for full disclosure, I do love to read, and I do use a Kindle. Note--my kids opened my facebook page and bought me the Kindle, and my husband bought me the cell phone. They are trying to drag me into the 21st century.But now I have a need to talk about electronics for hiking the Trail. I would love to be able to go without the gadgets, but that doesn't seem to be going to happen. My husband insists I carry a phone and a camera, and I do admit that those make sense. The phone for calling home and (hopefully never) calling for help in an emergency, assuming I can get a signal, and the camera to record all the fabulousness of the Trail. I had decided to carry my Kindle, because I have to read at night, and it makes more sense to carry 500 books than one. Then I would need a charger cord for the phone and the Kindle, and to stay in a motel or hostel often enough to keep things charged up. To continue this journal, my plan was to carry a notebook and pen, and to write an entry every night, and then mail them all back to my husband when I get to town (to charge the devices!) and he would transcribe them for me.Well, my daughter pointed out to me that I was planning to carry four different mechanisms, when her phone would be able to do all of that--phone, camera, Kindle, and type my own journal entries. Ordinarily I would have dismissed this idea because I don't want to have to learn how to operate all this new stuff when I understand how to operate the old stuff, but now that we're talking about carrying it all on my back--well, less is definitely more. My first objection was trying to type on the tiny little keyboard of a phone. Just sending text message is an exercise in frustration for me. But she showed me her flip-down keyboard, and had me try it, and it was really...not too bad. I could see myself typing on it. Then she showed me her Kindle books, they are really all on her phone! And I later found out that I could dictate--actually speak aloud my journal entries and somehow, magically, voila, they end up typed out. So theoretically, I could take pictures and write my journal entry and send it all from the same device? Can I learn all this? Will one gadget have enough battery life to perform ALL of these functions between charges? I don't know! But I would need newer phone, my little keyboard just won't cut it.So we (my husband and I) started looking at different phones online, and it rapidly just got way too confusing, and too expensive, for me. I found myself wanting to retreat back into the comfort of my familiar items. Give me a paperback and a notebook and pen, I want to eschew technology. But I realize that is just fear of the unknown. (Ha ha--I'm not afraid to venture off into the mountains alone, but I am afraid of little beeping boxes!)I don't know what gadgets I will be carrying with me on the trail just yet, it is still a work in progress. The rest of my gear is looking good though. I have a ULA Circuit backpack, and a new, lighter, Hennessy hammock. I got an Element stove from Dutchware, that can serve as either a windscreen for my homemade alcohol stove or as a woodburner for the nights I have enough time, energy, and dry wood to cook over fire. Two Smartwool tee shirts just arrived this week, I am psyched about them, hopefully they will retain less odor than synthetics! Just about 6 weeks left, doesn't seem possible. I am still very unhappy in my job, and counting the days till I can quit. My mother is sick, and that is a constant worry for me, and could also very possibly delay my start date. So I can't really whole-heartedly get into the Trail planning, because my main preoccupation is my mom. But I know it will all work out as it is supposed to.