Darkspace Press

Category: sponsor

  • Priceline-The Unofficial Sleep-Cheap Provider of the 2012 Graduation Road Trip

    We’ll be using Priceline and BiddingForTravel for most hotel stays during the trip.  Bidding For Travel is a forum with tips for successfully bidding on Priceline, as well as postings of successful and unsuccessful bids.

    For stops between destinations, we’ll likely just stop along the highway at the cheapest motel I can find, but for the destination cities like Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Seattle it’ll be Priceline using the Bidding For Travel strategies to get the best deal.

    Obviously this means we’ll be unable to select a specific hotel when bidding through Priceline, but that’s mostly okay with me.  The only place I’m concerned with more than the bottom-line price will be Vegas, where I want to stay somewhere really nice.  Frankly, I’d like Bellagio, but any 5-star on the strip will do.

    Speaking of Vegas, we’ll be noshing with the Buffet of Buffets.  $44.99 for 24-hours of dining at the Paris, Rio, Harrah’s, Planet Hollywood, Flamingo, and Imperial Palace buffets.

  • Camelbak–The Unofficial “Don’t die of dehydration 3-miles down the Grand Canyon trail” product of the 2012 Graduation Road Trip

    The girl-child says she wants to hike the Grand Canyon … by which, she means more than walking twenty feet out onto the overlook and saying, “Yep, that’s a big hole, let’s head for Vegas.”

    This trip is going to be in July.  The Grand Canyon, in case you weren’t aware, is in the freaking desert!

    In July.

    So I got one 70-ounce and one 100-ounce Camelbak, because it’s July in the freaking desert!

  • The Unofficial Tech of the 2012 Graduation Road Trip

    As with my kayak trips, we’ll be tracking hikes and walking with the Garmin eTrex 20.

    The Garmin Basecamp software will handle editing the GPS track to remove the crap that shows up because I forget to turn it off or reset the track before starting.  Basecamp will also be used to geotag our photos … assuming I remember to set the date/time on the camera when I change the battery.  It’s 6-to-5 against and pick ‘em for that to happen.

    We take that for granted now, geotagged photos, or, at least, the younger generations do – that and the ability to document something with an, effectively, unlimited number of photos.

    As I related in the first post here, my parents took road trips when I was young – this was in the early ‘70s mostly.  I was at my mom’s recently, talking about this trip, and she pulled out the photo album for those road trips in the ‘70s.  Two things struck me: for having spent weeks, maybe months, in some amazing places, there were very few photos and we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what state some of the pictures were from, much less where in the state.

    Today, with 32GB SD cards selling for $25, is there ever a reason not to take a picture?  With geotagged photos, will people a decade from now be able to conceive of not knowing, to the meter, where a photo was taken?  Even without a dedicated GPS, phones tag their pictures and apps can log the location for later tagging.

    That trip with my parents was forty years ago … forty years from now, instead of a few pages of yellowing photos in an album, this trip will still be documented with a Google Earth file with pristine copies of every photo included and exactly placed.

    Obviously we’ll need a way to blog while we’re on the road.  I looked into tablets, but I’m a keyboard-guy … I don’t like the onscreen keyboards, at least for any significant amount of typing.

    So we’ll be using an Acer Aspire One netbook along with a Logitech bluetooth trackball (I’m also not fond of pads).

    The car itself will be a rolling hotspot, provided through iPhone bluetooth tethering and AT&T.  Which likely means there will be significant delays in some new posts as we roll through the dead areas where AT&T has no coverage.

  • Toyota Prius–The Unofficial Car of the 2012 Graduation Road Trip

    http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/trims-prices.html

    Obviously the car that started this insanity is the most important piece of equipment.  Toyota should definitely get on-board with sponsoring this trip.

    MapQuest is currently estimating the fuel costs at around $800.  That’s more than the original $600 budget, but San Francisco and Seattle were worthy additions to the trip, so I’m okay with that.  I plan on using AAA’s report to locate cheaper gas, so hope to come in under that estimate.

    Over the course of this trip, we’ll be looking at the Prius’ performance, long-term comfort, and the ability of the electrical system to handle the other tech we’ll be using.

  • Corporate Sponsors

    Being an inveterate capitalist, I’ve decided to open the Jackson 2012 Graduation Road Trip up to corporate sponsors.  Sadly, I don’t have any actual connections to get the sponsorships up front, so this’ll be on spec.

    Over the course of the next twenty or so days before leaving on the trip, I’ll be detailing the items and equipment we’ll be using to make the road trip easier and more fun.  Some of these are things I already have and some are things I’ll be buying for the trip.

    My dream is that all these companies will read these and send me free stuff.  I can dream.