thoughts.bjsintay.com

I’ve been searching for interesting reading material on the Appalachian Trail and ran across National Geographic’s Mountain Adventure published decades ago.  Ebay delivered this book to me for under $10.00, so I figured I would give it a shot.  The book is authored by Ron Fisher.  Fisher has a calm, soothing tone.  He rarely interjects humor and instead uses vivid imagery to pull the reader along.

Fisher covers much of the trail on foot, however, he does not thru-hike the trail.  This book is merely a documentation of what the trail is and means to the areas it passes through.  I felt like I gained an appreciation for much of the trail’s qualities versus the whole hiking experience itself.  Most other books on the AT focus on the hiking experience.

My lasting impression of this book can be summed up as pleasantly descriptive of the trail’s general feel in each state.  I would not call this book a definitive text on the subject, but its breadth may appeal to a wide audience interesting in learning about the trail for the first time without having to hear long, twisted tails about what one has to go through to thru-hike it.

Sean was nice enough to lend me an extra copy of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods since he knows I am an avid Appalachian Trail (AT) hiker.  Many people cite Bryson’s book as the reason they become interested in hiking the trail, yet many in the AT community reject it for a variety of reasons, the biggest being that Bryson doesn’t actually thru-hike the trail.  The definition of a thru-hike is to physically walk past every white blaze (trail marker) of the AT in one season.  Bryson falls short of this and pretty much gives up his thru-hike at Clingman’s Dome in NC.  He ends up hiking many sections of the trail, much by day-hike from his car.

The greatest part about this book is often lost on many hikers.  Simply put, it’s a fun read about the Appalachian Trail.  Bryson’s sense of humor keeps the book interesting, even if he is a bit derogatory toward local residents of various places near the trail.  He’s extremely critical of the US Forest Service and also the Army Corps of Engineers, pretty much calling them idiots.  While some of his points are valid, he does push the envelope a bit.  Maybe it’s just to get people’s attention.   His book is well researched and includes many facts about the history of the trail and its various controversies over the years.

If you’re able to roll with a few harsh comments, an unusually slow/unsuccessful hiker, and the fact that Bryson doesn’t actually hike all of the miles then I recommend this book.  If not, head on over to http://www.skwc.com/exile/Hail-nf.html to read Then the Hail Came by George Staffanos.  I highly recommend this trail book/journal filled with extreme detail and tons of humor.

Features:

• - Talking navigation with intelligent voice
• - Brighter screen (than the c330)
• - Mounting system
• - Power adapter
• - SD memory slot
• - USB port with cable

The Garmin StreetPilot c340 was my choice for GPS navigation.  I selected this particular brand and model for a few important reasons.  First and foremost Garmin makes the easiest GPS navigation interface in my opinion.  Nothing is more than a couple clicks away including nearby restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores… 6 million points of interest in fact (compare that to just thousands in TomTom).  I also particularly like Garmin’s map rendering which is miles ahead of TomTom and all of the other systems I looked at.  Moreover, I discovered that many GPS navigation systems have rendering engines that look like attention to design was not considered in the slightest.  Finally, a critical feature is its ability to read street names in navigation instructions out loud (not available on the c330).

To test my system, I plugged everything in and set off for Myrtle Beach from my home in Winston-Salem, NC.  I had to make one stop at my in-law’s in Cornelius which was clearly far off of the route.  For about 15 minutes, the Garmin system gave me routing instructions to turn around and head the other way, which I was actually impressed with.  Instead of just saying, make a u-turn now, it actually found nice places to make an easy turn around using short roads without having to pull a 3-point or a u-turn.  Having not entered the address of my in-law’s on the itinerary, the Garmin system was thoroughly confused for a long time.  When I finally got on the road in the right direction, it started to settle down a bit.  The route it took me on was the exact route I would have planned myself minus driving through Friday rush-hour traffic down Independence Blvd. in Charlotte.  That set me back a bit.  One problem I noted was that it had a hard time identifying bypass highways that skipped thick business districts.  This only occurred in the country and as soon as I didn’t turn onto to the slower route, the computer recalculated my route within seconds and approved of the new route I was on.  Using a bit of common sense can save you some time since it’s hard for a little device like this to always optimize a long drive perfectly.

I arrived exactly when the system predicted I would.  The trip computer inside of the system is really nice.  It logs time, mileage, speed, average speed, time stopped, time moving, average speed while moving, and max speed (erase this if you get pulled over by an officer with one click on “Reset Max”).

Satellite reception is no problem for me on the road, but of course I cannot pick up anything when in a garage or parking deck.  Once I noticed the system thought I was on the other side of the highway and demanded that I exit up the wrong side of the ramp and pull a u-turn.  I thought that was funny.  A cool feature of the c340 is that the woman that speaks to you actually says the road names instead of just “turn left in half of a mile”.  That helps me figure out where I need to go without having to look at the screen.  I found that the brightness of the screen is adequate even in sunny conditions while wearing my sunglasses.  The windshield mount works perfectly.

I am very pleased with this device.  It has exceeded most of my expectations and has instantly become an integral part of travel for me.  I was able to find destinations with door-to-door directions read from a soothing voice which could be heard even over relatively loud music.  I would recommend this unit to anyone looking to get a GPS navigation system.  It’s especially nice to use once you get to your travel destination as you can quickly find places that you need to get to when you’re not in familiar territory.  I give this device 5 out of 5 stars because they really couldn’t have done anything better in my opinion.  It’s simple, sleek, and fully featured.

Every once in a great while you discover a piece of music that you simply cannot stop playing over and over again.  In my adventures through the UK’s music scene I stumbled upon Keane’s Under the Iron Sea.  This CD instantly became one of my favorites, especially the tunes Atlantic, Leaving So Soon, and Crystal Ball.  The melodies are unique and intricate while preserving the flavor and style of modern UK music that I enjoy.  Very few disks have matched the continuous back-to-back play time I’ve given Under the Iron Sea in the past year.  I still don’t tire of the melodies.  If you haven’t checked this out yet, you absolutely must.

 After listening to this CD for a few months, I purchased Hopes and Fears, Keane’s previous release.  It’s usually hard to go in the other direction once you’ve heard a group’s most recent release, however, I have really enjoyed Hopes and Fears nearly as much as Under the Iron Sea.  Keane’s sound evolved slightly between the two CDs, but for the most part, it still has all of the wonderful characteristics of Under the Iron Sea.  If you’ve never heard them before and want to listen, pick up the newest release.

I recently purchased a FM transmitter (Belkin TuneCast II) to connect my iPod to my Mercury Mountaineer.  This purchase came after more than a year of stalling due to all of the poor reviews I had read on the net.  I was concerned about 2 primary issues: sound quality and reception.  I finally bought one with a gift certificate since I wasn’t willing to risk hard earned cash on it.

I drove with this model in my driver-side cupholder for nearly 400 miles.  I ran the player for about 8 hours straight through 3 very large metropolitan areas and also through the country.  I used the batteries (wish they had included a power adapter in this model).  On first setup, I turned on the device by holding both tune buttons down.  I located a station range in the lower FM 90’s where I could not find a clear radio station for 0.4 or so on the FM dial.  I then tuned my TuneCast right in the middle of those.  I turned up the sound on my car and pressed play on my iPod.  I was instantly greeted with poor signal and tons of static as reported by many on the internet.  I was pretty mad, then I realized my iPod volume was turned down a bit.  I turned this up to about 95% and instantly the sound came pumping through my car’s system clear as a bell.

On my trip I had to change the station 3 times as I moved in and out of metropolitan areas.  This became evident as the signal would slowly gain static.  All I did was first locate the closest station with no or little radio broadcast signal (tons of static), then I dialed the TuneCast to that station.  It worked perfectly each time and only took seconds, so this did not bother me at all.  When I came back the same way a few days later, I didn’t have to change the station once.

With regard to battery life, I found that my TuneCast ran on the 2 AAA batteries for about 8 hours.  When the batteries died, they died instantly and my signal was lost within seconds.  I simply replaced, and was jamming again in a minute.

Possible problems people could have with this are (1) poor placement relative to your car’s antenna (good in Mercury Mountaineers), (2) small signal strength of audio player - iPod (20GB, 4th gen) at 95% is pretty loud in earphones and it’s possible not all players can go loud enough to eliminate much of the static in the FM broadcast, (3) trying to tune to a station that already has a radio broadcast in the area or has an FM band close to the one you’re using - find one to use with some room on each side for little static, (4) songs that use intense ends of the frequency spectrum like extremely low basses or high-pitched whooshes from cymbals, etc - I found that songs with a lot of bass and crashes had some static in those spectrums (a limitation of FM in general, but not really an annoyance to me; your radio station overcomes this with special compression).

Overall, I gave this device 4 out of 5 because of the power situation.  I would have liked it to come with an adapter.  Things I really like are the small size, 0.1 FM resolution on the entire range, batteries optional, auto-on/off feature (works great!).  This device may not work for everyone, but you need to understand the limitations of this technology before you go calling it a piece of junk.  Small devices like this have Federally mandated operating powers so that they don’t override your local FM stations for everyone else, otherwise I’m sure they would have a strong enough signal for anyone’s car configuration (and heck, entire neighborhood for that matter).  (adapted from my review at amazon.com)