so close to going so far

So why did I buy a little laptop? Well it would be easy to think that I’d just fallen into the trap of bandwagon consumerism. Yes, it’s true these little beauties have become the techno accessory de-jour for cyber geeks, teenage girls and those who profess to be on the cutting edge of whatever. There is reasoning behind the purchase. The first part is the fact that they are desperately cool. My Asus Eee PC is slightly larger then a hardcover book, weighs about 1.5kg has 1GB of ram, 160GB hard drive, 6hrs of battery life and cost me about $400 US. It’s amazing how far computers have come in the last year – forget the last decade. While all this is cool – the reason why I bought it has more to do with what I do then anything. As a travel writer and adventurer having a portable laptop is worth its weight in gold. This little guy will swim in my daypack and is sure to ride shotgun on every overseas foray for the foreseeable future.

So why now? What am I not saying? It’s true; I’ve been keeping pretty quiet about plans as of late. The reason being was that I didn’t want to jinx things as details were still being ironed out. But seeing as I have the flights booked and the trip is happening whether I want it to or not – it’s time to come clean.

On July 16th I’m headed to San Francisco and then quickly onward to Toronto. In Toronto I’ll get on my bike and start riding west. The plan is to ride either to Calgary (where I grew up) or all the way to Vancouver. Though it may sound like a cop-out to stop at Calgary, it is still a 3000km ride – Vancouver is another 1000km beyond. I’m planning on going super light - crazy, ill advised light actually. I’ll have a change of clothes, rain jacket, iPod, this laptop, a micro sleeping bag and an emergency tarp and that’s it. I’ll be on my road bike, with a rack and arrow bars – and going as fast as I can. I’m planning on averaging 140km per day arriving in Calgary in about 4 weeks. It’s going to be huge. It’ll be an awesome adventure to say the least – which I’ll be blogging about the whole way, and shooting a photo of the day too, of course.

So is that it? Nope, there is still another month in North America after that filled with and even crazier adventure… but that’s a whole different post!

Watch this space…