Single digits

March 6, 2023

There are a few odds and ends to report, as we watch the hour hand slowly inch forward with just nine days until liftoff. First, the plan. At last report we presented a detailed three part itinerary for the trip, and stated that while we had booked all of our month in Sicily we were leaving virtually all of the rest of the tour unbooked for the time being.

That’s all changed. One thing led to another, and eventually we ended up booking everything, bottom to top. There’s no doubt that changes will come from time to time during plan execution, but at least we’re starting out with every layover defined and all lodging booked. And, in the course of booking we made some significant changes to the route. We might as well start the tour with accurate overview maps so here are the new, finalized routes for the two mainland months (Sicily, which was already booked, is unchanged).

May 20 - June 12: Pesaro to Padova (and train to Bologna).

And then, we can report we’re making good progress on departure preparations. There’s still a lot to be done, but there’s not much tension any more over whether it will all fit in. For instance, Rachael got her haircut today; so that’s one item off the critical task list.

A technical upgrade

One other task already completed was to replace my iPad, which over the winter has gotten progressively less reliable. Frustrating, but it’s at least fortunate that it’s been rapidly giving up the ghost here at home rather than on tour. Mine was an iPad Air (3rd generation), which has been superseded and is no longer available. We could have saved a few dollars and gotten a 4th generation model but we decided to get current and spring ahead for the 5th. There are several changes of course, which for me at first mostly were irritants. The behavior is different with a slightly different virtual keyboard layout and different hand motions to learn for basic tasks such as activating the device, opening icons, returning to the Home Screen, and so on. Irritating, because I’m a slow learner and it took awhile to retrain my fingers.

Also irritating was that I could no longer load photos from my camera, which was pretty much the first thing I wanted to do with the new device once it arrived. Beginning with generation 4, iPads now use a standard USP-3 port rather than the ‘lighting’ port used by iPhones and older Apple products. As a result, our SD card adapter is not compatible with the new iPad. I had to go down to the Apple Store to buy the correct one, and now we have to carry both with us because Rachael’s iPad mini is an older device and refuses to die just yet.

On the plus side it works great, is significantly faster, and has a noticeably larger display window for the same dimension device because the external margin is slimmer.

Introducing the new iPad Air (5th generation).

Rachael’s more visionary though, and was quite excited about the new device because it has a USB port - or so she thought. She was excited because she thought now we’d be able to connect up the new iPad to other devices such as an offline storage unit. She got one out and tried to plug it in to the iPad, but we couldn’t find the port. There isn’t one. It has a USB-3 port, which is different than USB. News to both of us. So while I was down at the Apple Store to pick up a SD card to USB-3 adapter, I also picked up a USB to USB-3 adapter. A bargain at just $39 each. Thanks, Apple!

Much frustration ensued when none of our storage devices connected to the iPad, for reasons we’re not really sure of but we think is because they’re being treated as read only. Finally, Rachael wondered if a flash drive would work, and we hunted around to see if we had one. We found exactly one, a drive I’ve been carrying around for five years unused. It’s been unused because we don’t really have anything on the road to connect it to, although I imagine the Raven probably has a USB port somewhere if we hunted around for it. It’s a wonder I haven’t managed to lose it over the last five years, but it’s a good thing because it’s a gold mine. It’s a gift from our friend Frank, who loaded it up with a bazillion jazz songs and albums from his vast music library when we sold our condo and got rid of our music system.

And does it work? Hell, yeah it works! Once we figured out the steps we managed to load its entire contents to my iPad. Very easily done:

Whoosh! Imagine the sound of the iPad inhaling a few hundred jazz standards.

So now, we’ve got a large jazz library at hand any time we want to listen to some tunes, which we actually don’t do that often. What we do often do though is wade through our library for music to put to videos. And it took some experimentation but we’ve got that figured out too.

Video sound track: I don’t want to be kissed (by anyone else but you), by Miles Davis and the Gil Evans Orchestra

Thanks, Frank!

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Keith AdamsIt's not just Apple that plays the port game. Thinking I would be carrying my Samsung tablet last summer I bought an SD card reader with a micro-USB connector to match what was on the tablet. I never succeeded in getting the tablet to acknowledge its presence.

Then it occurred to me that I also have a card reader with a USB C plug. purchased so that I could offload photos from the camera to a predecessor tablet. It worked fine with my phone (which has a USB-C port) but not with the tablet (even after I bought the USB-C to micro USB adapter needed to try the experiment).

I ended up leaving the tablet at home and doing everything on my phone, which saved me a pound and a half of cargo weight. I just replaced my phone but haven't yet tried the adapter in the new one. Ought to get to that one of these days, I suppose, but if it doesn't work then what? (I could use the camera-to-phone WiFi app to access and transfer photos but I'm old-fashioned and prefer the physical device approach. Plus then I don't fill up the phone's storage with redundant copies of images.)
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1 year ago

Janice BranhamThis is much progress. I do find that the route changes and the trip gets more real when I figure out where we're actually going to stay.
Congrats on fighting through the technical jungle with the new iPad. I enjoyed the view from your aerie.
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1 year ago