We - well, I do - forget how quickly technological developments are changing the way we live. In 2001, with CTC in Baltimore, Wim and I did a camping tour along the East coast of the U.S. We read our email in the local public libraries, a great free service. Eight years later, we travel with our notebook computers and have free wifi in all motels. We still go camping, and then we just park near a motel for wifi service. Clearly, we do not make electronic payments over open wireless, but otherwise it is very handy. There will be free wifi at CTC in Denver too.
Wim keeps track of his photo sales, and I have composed my presentation for CTC while we were in Yellowstone National Park which does not provide any kind of connectivity whatsoever. But I sat in a lobby with a view of Old Faithful Geyser for a couple of hours and moved and pasted my slides. As I closed my notebook, Old Faithful gracefully erupted. Awesome.
We also bought a satellite navigation system (a tom-tom) to experiment with while driving. It was $ 129 at WalMart. And as things go, the function we use most is not the one it was designed for, but something else: that of keeping track of maximum speed. It shows you the maximum speed and beeps when you drive too fast. It also finds us hotels and restaurants. We will bring it home and download the European maps. However, we still have lots of paper maps and would not know how to travel without them.