Speaking of pulling small building, I recall there was some talk of you
stopping at Jon's and picking up a few items before heading out. Since we'll
be taking the Ram, I'll be limited to what I can fit in the backseat. Nothing
goes in the bed of that truck and I'm trying to keep our packing as light as
possible, just what we need for clothes (planning on at least 1 or 2 laundry
days during the 3 week trip, tent (including that 10x20 canopy we have)
sleeping bags, folding chairs, flash lights, cooler and all the necessary
electronics (laptop, GPS, Digital Cameras, DV Cam, etc...)
A few thoughts I've been pondering:
The Lawn Jenga set. It's heavy and takes up a lot of space. My thought was
either dropping it at Jon's a few weeks early so you can take it out with you.
or preferably, I recall we have someone on the list out that way, if by chance
he has a chop or skil saw, we just buy 8 2x3s when we're out there and play
drunken, flaming Jenga on the last evening. Saves us from having to lug it back
and forth across country. What do you think?
The next idea, is major geek but, Did we ever come up with a consensus of how
we were going to handle Internet access? I know Lone Duck has Wi-fi access.
Was everyone just going to pay the extra money and get Wi-Fi through the
campground? I've been experimenting with running a Linksys wireless G router
on a cigarette lighter adapter. It actually wasn't all that hard, the Linksys
was 12V so I just had to make up a cable to plug it into the lighter. Ingrid's
nephew has been able to establish a network connection between two vehicles
while traveling on the highway and he is working on a way to boost the radio
power of the Linksys. He was showing me, yesterday, some amplifier chips he
got from work that he says may be able to boost the linksys to about 20 watts
output power. That combined with a mag mount, high gain antenna on the roof, we
should be able to increase the range of the linksys quite a bit. We're going
to give it a try soon. He's a big HAM nut and works part time for a radio
communications company as a tech while he's in school. Now my thought is, if
we can get this working like we want, I just got a Cingular Wireless broadband
PC card for my laptop in the truck and the idea is to share out the connection
and connect the Linksys WAN port to the on board RJ45 on the back of the
laptop. Theory being, I should be able to set up an access point right in the
truck that will also travel with us on our day trips (as long as I can get a
wireless broadband connection). I also have a wireless streaming IP camera
that I want to see if I can get it to stream right from the cab of the truck.
That looks to be 5V so I'll have to work on a way to remotely power it without
having to run 15 different lighter adapters to power everything. Hmmm.. I'll
have to get a Mountain Dew and think about this. DML shenanigans, Live from CO.
Also, anyone who plans on bringing their camcorders, bring your RCA or S-Video
connection cables and some blank DVDs as well. I have a Sony VDC-20 DVDirect
burner that I will be bringing with me. We can burn any video source direct to
DVD while we're there and distribute. I'll have to look into my power options
with that. It too has a 12V transformer but has an odd connector and I don't
want to cut the cable, so I may have to run that on AC. I've already copied
some of the video I got from the last few BBQs (including stuff I've copied
from Jon and Tom) on DVD. Radio Shack has an DLP Projector with a built in DVD
player on sale right now. I was going to go down this week and take a look and
what other inputs it has on it. If it also has SVGA ports, I may pick one up
and we'll have movie and picture night on the side of the big white canopy
tent.
Hey you guys have seen how much I rough it when camping. I'm such a geek!
Walt
In article <444089CB.10605@bleazard.net>, dml@bleazard.net (Jason Bleazard)
writes:
>
> Count us out of the convoy. We'll be pulling a small building, and not
> doing it anywhere nearly that quickly. Wave as you fly past :-).
>
.
.
.------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Make your plans NOW to attend the National DML Meet in Colorado! |
| Date: July 15-23, 2006 - More info: http://meet.dakota-truck.net |
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