Power!

H:
When you think about hiking for 6 months you think first of the hiking, but there will surely be a bit of time on your hands when you're not walking.  Some folks talk about falling exhausted into the sleeping bag and waking the next day to do it all again.  When we bicycled we each kept a daily journal of our thoughts about life and the trip, but we were often looking for additional entertainment throughout the day.

In the end we hit up libraries when we found them to update our blog, check emails, etc.  Instead of taking entertainment we found it.  We went to a cinema, went to a couple parties, floated down a river on a boat, watched a sailboat tack under the bridge we ate lunch next to, visited some museums, took a few hikes, and mostly spent a lot of time being the center of entertainment telling stories of our trip and of ourselves to complete strangers.  But all these things are less likely to be found on the trail.

I once read about a hiker who ripped apart a paperback novel by the chapter and included it in their restock parcels they had mailed to them as they hiked.  Others tote around the whole book and some take magazine.  My reading of modern hikers tend more toward hauling some sort of electronic device for entertainment: cell phone, camera, MP3 player, Kindle.  We are in the process of sorting out exactly what we want to try.

The following are items we are planning on taking:

• 2nd generation Kindle = 170g 
• Cellphone.  Dave has a Samsung Galaxy S2 = 166g 
• Mini MP3 player for listening to music and audio books = 56g (1 for each person = 112g)

Total weight: 448g or just under 1 pound.  

But now we come down to battery power.  The Kindle will survive for a couple of weeks of use on a single charge.  Dave is currently performing tests on his phone to find out battery capacity.  The MP3 player is new and hardly used so we need to run tests on that as well.  All of these device recharge via micro or mini USB and there is a proliferation of rechargeable battery packs available.  

Our first battery pack purchase weighed 280g (over half a pound) and held a 10,000mAh charge.  The drawback to this battery pack was that once discharged it took over 9 hours plugged into AC power to recharge itself.  Dave wanted the recharge to happen faster and decided on smaller battery packs and more of them.   

Our next attempt will be three 3,000mAh batteries that weigh about 85g each.  A sight loss of battery capacity but may be worth the drop because these are reported to recharge quicker due to being smaller so long as we take enough recharge adapters to plug into AC power.  Dave also likes this idea because of electronic redundancy and weight distribution between packs.  

Now... what books to take along?!