Charging

As I plugged my second cell phone in one night this week, I realized that the charging situation in my life has become fairly dire. I have both a personal and work phone, a laptop, a GPS watch, an iPod, an iPad, and a Kindle that all have to be topped off at various times depending on their battery status. It has come to the point of traveling with a power strip/surge protector because I have found hotel rooms rarely have enough power outlets for me to have everything plugged in at once and that just will not do. Along with the power strip, I have a small Pelican case with all my chargers and a spare wireless router just in case the hotel I’m going to only allows one connection or makes you sign in with MAC address filtering. I can’t have just one of my devices connected to the network; I demand continuous and full connection to the Internet at all times on all my devices.

Remarkably, I’m still able to travel for great lengths of time with just one suitcase and one carry on. There are the occasional trips that require either a larger suitcase or two smaller ones, but in general I am able to make everything fit in one. Any by “make everything fit” I mean “shove mercilessly until I can force the zipper shut and hope it does not explode at any point in my travels”. So far, the strategy works though I can see it causing problems later on if I arrive to an empty suitcase and my clothes strewn about the baggage claim area.

Mentioning my GPS watch; I’ve really started wearing it every time I run now. I kept forgetting it or not charging it for a while there, but I’ve now logged 197 miles on it (most of which have been added in the last month or so). Now that I wear it everywhere, people I run with have started to rely on it more for split times and mile paces. I forgot to bring it to a run the other morning and I felt as if I was going to be ostracized or outcast from the group because I could no longer provide them their splits or know the exact pace we were keeping. I offer more than just a technologically advanced watch, people; I offer witty banter and constant encouragement as well!