Day 0 – Final Prep

Monday, October 20th

We spent today finding and packing our last bits of supplies and equipment, hoping we hadn’t forgotten anything. After a long ordeal with the local post office last Thursday (which is a whole other story) we finally received the gps unit we ordered several weeks ago. It came with an SD card that was supposed to be preloaded with the maps that we’d need, but was not, so we headed to the local Garmin dealer which happened to be Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World.

Without getting too far off topic, if you’ve never been to a Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, take time out of your life to do so. You probably won’t find anything that falls under the categories “affordable” or “necessary” (even “useful” might be a reach) but you will be amazed. Amazed to the point that you’ll want to tell your children of the magical land where motionless animals hang from the sky and mannequins garbed for every outdoor activity (but never quite with their hats on straight) abound amidst aisles and piles of products you’ll never use, but wish you could.

My dad spotted a $10K rifle. Think about that one for a moment.

But back to the matter at hand: we bought the Garmin/Mapsource City Navigator NT North America DVD for which the front side of the package reads: “Contains detailed map data for the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.” and “Find your unlock certificate in between the cardboard inside.” On the DVD jewel case itself, it says “Setup and map data DVD”, “fully routable detailed maps with road details throughout the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico”. The back panel of the package reads “With this purchase you will have access to the entire DVD coverage” and when listing the requirements, says: “Internet access recommended”.

We brought this $100+ DVD home and attempted to load it on the computer, but it turns out you have to use the 8-character coupon code to redeem the necessary 25-character unlock key and to use either of these, you have to register the product first. None of this was mentioned on the package. I spent about an hour and 15 min on the phone, 55 of which was spent on hold and all I learned was that my internet connection was too slow for their server to notice my request. I left a message with the software supervisor and was promised a return call but didn’t receive it. And in about 10 min, we will have officially spent over 12 hours working on implementing this Garmin software but have made little useful progress.

If you can avoid it, don’t bother purchasing Garmin’s software. It will be worth your time, money and privacy to find an alternative, especially since Garmin is not providing what they advertise on the packaging and they are not interested in supporting their products.

On a happier note, here are our bikes packed and almost ready to go!

The blue one is a Bacchetta Agio (we call her the MiniWini (or minnie winnie) – as in a Mini Winnebago – because this bike is unbelievable comfortable and, with the addition of the electric motor, can easily carry a big load). The black one is my dad’s Bacchetta Corsa (he calls it the Stick, but as a fan of Top Gear I’m trying to convince him to rename it the Stig; without the use of a motor, he can climb hills at around 30 mph on this ride! It’s unbelievable).

For those of you who were wondering, every night we’ll be posting the day’s stats for each bike.