Category: Travel and Tourism
So as I wrote about a few weeks ago, my trip to Tenessee is coming near. I will be leaving 5 in the morning this Thursday to travel to Pigeon Fordge.
Yeah I have my laptop, which battery lasts about 3 good hours, a little longer if I'm lucky. I also have my mp3 player, but still.
I'm going to be in my mom's Ucon for about 10 hours.
I'm just looking for other ideas to intertain myself. What do others do to keep occupied. There is a good chance my 2 year old niece might be riding along, so I definitely need something to keep me from shaking a screaming baby... I'm just joking of course!
Lol Britney. I hate travelling in cars for a long distance because you can't get up and walk around. Sitting still for a long time makes me uncomfortable. My first suggestion was going to be to listen to music which is exactly what I do. I usually travel by train and they have outlets near my seat, so I don't have the issue of things running out of power. If you like reading, bring a book. That makes time go by faster than you realize until you look at what time it is. Have fun, safe travels.
Thanks Ryan. I actually for got to mention, I bought a dc to ac power voncerter at Walmart for abou 30 bucks. Its this small box with an ac plug on one end and the dc cigarett lighter style in the other. So you plug it in to the lighter where you would any car charger and you have power. I'm just afraid I'll kill the battery on the truck lol so i'm afraid to use it much. I know it should be safe if we are moving, but still. I can amagine us, like the sceen in the hangover movie, in the middle of no where broke down in the desert, except we are going to be in the mountains lol!
Hmmm. Bring cards if you've got them. Maybe bring a game, or app on the phone that can entertain everyone, so that not only are you not bored, but so is everyone else in the car. This is boring for a total, but play the license plate game if you have a little sight. Hmmmm. Bring lots of cds to play in the truck if you have a cd player, to save your mp3 player battery, or an audio book to listen to.
Good idea, that reminds me I need to pack my braille cards to night. I have a bunch of books I keep saying I'm gonna read so that will kill some of the time.
Take a Benedril and sleep. lol J/K. I usually take books. Your converter thingy sounds cool. You're good so long as the car is moving because the alternater is recharging the car battery. Have a safe and fun trip.
watch about 3 movies and your there.
The Rock, The Cell and Independence Day.
I recently lost my iPod video, and it makes me sort of sad. That thing's battery life was long enough to get me from Ontario to Alaska with thirty percent battery left over, layovers included, if I wanted to listen to a lot of music or read an audiobook. I lost it on a plane though, so that option's out. I, like you, have three or four hours in my laptop and that's about it; that cigarette-lighter type charger thing you mentioned should turn the trick, since Domestic Goddess is right about the alternator keeping the battery going so you won't flatten it out.
I don't know if you're into portable gaming systems of any kind, but one of those might also be a viable alternative, as might a Victor Stream or another comparable audio player. Their battery life is phenomenal, so much so that I'm confident that I will be able to last through a four-hour plane ride and a more than six-hour bus ride next time I go and see my partner without ever coming close to killing the battery.
Whatever happens, good luck travelling.
Shepherdwolf, I am trying to sell my MP3 player... 40GB hard drive. pm if interested.
SOrry for thread highjack!
Screw technology, gadgets, or whatever other means of circumventing an adventure. I’d get away from it all and appreciate the journey, let the adventurous spirit take possession.
10 hours is a blink of an eye, not an eternity. People really don’t allow themselves personal freedom, can’t disconnect themselves nowadays.
Learn about the cities and towns you’ll be passing through so you can make short stops along the way. Eat at some unknown restaurant that offers food you might like.
Try to make the experience an actual roadtrip, not some kind of prison sentence.
While I see the previous poster's point, it depends a great deal on who you're travelling with, since it will be the driver, to some extent, who dictates what you do and how you experience it if you're totally blind. I definitely don't view long trips as prison sentences...and it's good that I don't because going to see Meglet at her home involves a couple of goodish stretches of travel that I can't just interrupt. In any case, one often gets stuck figuring out ways to pass the time. If you're blind or VI, you're going to probably have trouble looking out the window and pointing out scenery. Opening the window to hear more probably won't do you much good on a highway at sixty-five miles an hour or so...all you'll get is wind and road grit in your face, plus the roar of traffic of course. I suppose you could ask your travelling companions what they see, but oftentimes this will result in annoyance and frustration on all sides. It would be lovely to do as you say, but in a lot of cases it's simply impractical, and when it is impractical to stop a lot, eat at restaurants you've never heard of and otherwise take in your surroundings, then you may want a way to speed up the hours otherwise spent inside a steel box on wheels as it ferries you from one point in your life to the next.
I was going to say the same as the poster above. I use travel time to catch up on books and also tv shows. I am currently watching SVU from season 1 so that takes up a lot of my travel time. Also I have a MP3 player with rockbox preloaded on it and the thing has excellent battery life.
If you contribute to travel expenses, petrol, food, car rental, and so on, you automatically get a say in how the itinerary is mapped out.
You can make arrangements with your companions beforehand as to what accomodations you might need, even offer to buy them dinner if they’ll describe some places or architecture, this way you’re not completely oblivious to your surroundings.
Otherwise when someone asks you how your roadtrip went, instead of sharing your experience, telling about the things you saw, places you visited, you’ll have nothing to say except you sat in a car and listened to a book.
Just because the visible world outside your car windows is beyond your senses doesn't mean you should totally dismiss it. you should look for other ways to learn about it, not just resign yourself to ignorance.
Sure no one is obligated to describe the scenery and sites, but the original poster mentioned traveling with family, who most likely understand her situation, and would be more than willing to explain things.
What’s the point of going on a roadtrip if all you’re going to do is close yourself off from the world. May as well catch a flight and surround yourself with complete strangers.
It’s understandable if money is short and going by car is the most inexpensive alternative. But this can be turned into an opportunity to learn and explore. And it’s only a 10-hour roadtrip, which means only 1 visit to a nice unknown mom and pop restaurant would be necessary. You don’t have to limit yourself to one of those boring rest stops.
The car stereo should suffice as entertainment.
Anyway, that’s just how I’d go about it.
As I said, I can see what you're getting at, and if the point is travel rather than a destination, then I would sort of agree. Something to consider though: I'm twenty-nine, blind since birth and have a family I love, but I've tried the asking-the-scenery trick, and it gets really boring after awhile. Very few people I've come into contact with are going to want to spend the majority of a ten-hour car trip explaining stuf; someone who's not driving may even want to sleep.