Riding to the Moon is proud to present real-time CYBERTRAVEL on the internet to the world of motorcycle adventure/touring. While on the road, the team will use the latest in computer and communications technology to maintain and update this website, posting journal entries and participating in electronic mail as we travel .

Digital cameras will photograph the entire trip. An ongoing journal will be written on a laptop computer. Website, word processing, and graphics software will combine the photos and text into an html-formatted webpage. A satellite telephone, in conjunction with a modem installed in the computer, will be used to upload the completed journal entries as well as receive and send e-mail. When satellite reception is no longer possible, connecting to the internet will be done through universities, internet cafes, and private individuals (anywhere we can find a connection, actually!).

The Riding to the Moon team is excited to use this technology in order that many others may vicariously join them on their trip to the bottom of the world. Read our day-by-day account of all the adventures.

The Technological Stuff

The basic idea was to combine digital photos and text into an html-formatted webpage and upload it onto our website for everyone to access and read in their home or office, sitting in comfort and safety while vicariously living out the adventure.


The Computer

The computer was a portable number from NEC, a Versa 4200 model with color screen. With a gig of harddrive space, 16 megs of ram, a built-in 28.8 modem, a floppy drive and a PC card slot (no CD-rom), all we had to do was load it with the appropriate software.


The journals were written in a word-processing application, Microsoft Word; the photos were handled first with proprietary software from the digital camera company and then with Adobe Photoshop. The webpage builder was HomeSite. We used Netscape Navigator when on-line and for viewing our html's, and Eudora handled the e-mail. A few utilities and general applications rounded out the package, but we hardly ever used anything else.

The computer worked tirelessly and was unbelievably reliable considering the shocks and vibrations it had to deal with on a 14,000 motorcycle trip, travelling on its side shoved inside a big plastic case mounted to the bike. Three-quarters of the screen was smashed up early in the trip, the victim of a low-speed wipe out on a muddy road. The shattered glass could be seen piled up on the inside of the lid, but the remaining quarter of the screen, the upper-right quadrant, worked fine for the rest of the trip. After resizing all of our application windows to fit in this small space, we continued our work with little difficulty. Whenever possible, we hooked the laptop to an external monitor and expanded our workspace for more efficiency.


The Digital Camera

We used two Ricoh RDC-2 digital cameras for documenting the trip in pictures. The camera has three quality settings, two lens selections, and a flip-up view screen. Flash, date and time stamp, self-timer, even a mini-microphone and audio recording setting round out the general specs.

With the aid of a 20mb PC card inserted into the camera, we could take 100 pictures at the highest setting. Then we would eject the card, insert it into the laptop, and using the proprietary software from Ricoh called PhotoStudio, we would transfer the files to the computer, erase the PC card, and reuse it in the camera for another hundred photos. Most of the time we used the software in the laptop only to review the pictures and convert them into GIF files for the internet. It was rare that we needed to modify or enhance a photo. The quality of pictures from the digital camera were simply superb.

The camera also stood up well to the rigors of long-distance motorcycling. It uses 2 AA batteries which could last for several days depending on how much the small LCD screen was used. One thing is for sure, a digital camera is a great ice-breaker in a social situation. Say 'cheese.'


The Satellite Phone

Why bother with the complications of land-lines in a foreign country? We brought a satellite phone to do away with all of that.

From Westinghouse came a state-of-the-art Series 1000 unit. Skysite Communications provided the airtime at no charge, normally several dollars a minute. We hard-mounted the phone into a rugged, weather-proof box and secured that to the tail of one of the motorcycles. For power, we custom spliced a standard 110 Edison connector onto auxiliary leads from the bike's battery and simply plugged the phone in. A 3-foot non-flexible antenna that screws into the phone unit and is a vital piece of equipment for finding and maintaining good signal strength was carefully slid between frame components on the motorcycle when travelling.

After a few minutes of self-diagnostics and start-up routines, the phone is ready for use. Voice transmissions are easy and reliable, though a slight delay takes getting used to, like in the old days of long-distance phones. Unfortunately for us, the date transmission rate is only 2400 baud and can drop out rather easily. Therefore, we used the satellite phone primarily for shorter transmissions like e-mail. A short text-only file could be reliably uploaded to the internet, but the larger photo files took too long and usually didn't upload successfully.

The phone is remarkably compact for what it is, though the solid-state electronics make the unit quite heavy, not too heavy for a motorcycle, but too heavy to haul around walking. And we didn't even take the super-heavy battery pack or cumbersome dish antenna. Also, two weeks of bouncing around on the back of the bike took its toll and the phone stopped working well short of its intended range of the country of Colombia.

For many applications, the phone is a remarkable tool. For us, we need to wait for future enhancements before it can be a sure-fire tool for future trips. An amazing machine that can only get better.


The Solar power panel

Keep It Simple Systems donated a small solar-powered energy panel. Although not powerful enough to run everything at once, it provided enough juice in bright sunlight to run the computer or charge its battery, but not the satellite phone. The two-panel unit folds up into the size of a thin notebook and weighs very little. No moving parts make it a sturdy piece of equipment. We didn't use it very often, relying on batteries or house power most of the time, but we can appreciate its potential in emergency situations or extended stays in remote areas.