Home is Where the Charger is

Noosaville QLD

Feb 21 2010

Planning for this trip involved a great deal of imagination. We had to imagine our family in a whole variety of situations and try to plan accordingly. What we couldn't visualize and plan for we'd fill in on the way. One thing I didn't see fully grasp was the energy demands a 21st century American family while on the road. Sure, I knew we'd need to recharge our batteries, but I underestimated the time it takes to charge a battery and by extension the number of chargers and converter plugs needed to sustain our load.

With two cell phones, a netbook computer, four cameras, two nIntendo DSIs, four head lamps, battery operated tooth brushes and four Amazon Kindle E-readers we have quite the foot print. Even if we had all the converter plugs and inverters we needed we still wouldn't have enough plugs in most places we've stayed, so we needed to develop a charge strategy to sustain us. I'll defend our gadget load in another post so all you Thoreau types will have to wait to argue that point.

There are two things you need to properly charge your gadgets en route: converter plugs and transformers. Converter plugs do nothing more than change the shape of one plug to another. Each country / region basically has its own plug standard. Hence the need for a converter. Transformers shift voltage between 110 and 220 volts. I'll never forget the time dad plugged the brand new American bought stereo into the 220 oulet in Pakistan back in the 70s. The smell of circuitry melting into a useless glob of plastic and heavy metal is something you wont soon forget. So transformers are important. They are also heavy and often bulky. We have one transformer that came as part of a terrific travel kit Jackie's folks gave us for Christmas this year. Converter plugs are all that is needed for electronic devices that can accept 110 - 220 volts as input. Our netbook, the Amazon Kindle charge cords and one of our two cell phone chargers accept 220 volts. The camera and flashlight battery chargers however, depend on the transformer.

Charge!
The netbook is our command center so it gets priority. It also has an old battery that can't hold a charge beyond a couple of hours so its basically plugged in as much as possible. To reduce weight, I only brought two of the four charge cables for the Kindles so two get charged at a time and usually at night or when we're out for the day. Through dumb luck or excellent planning (you decide) three of our cameras use the same battery. We have four camera batteries in rotation which is usually sufficient to keep up with the power demands of the cameras. The digital SLR has its own larger battery and charger. Luckily it seems to require far fewer charges than its instamatic relatives. Thanks to LED bulbs our flashlight batteries seem to last forever. I haven't had to recharge flashlight batteries since Auckland. We highly recommend LEDs in flashlights and headlamps.

Ideally we'd have six converter plugs and three transformers. At 12 bucks a pop, converter plugs are not cheap (like me). They're also bulky and take up valuable space in our luggage so I'm resisting buying more than we absolutely need. We have two converter plugs. One that came with the travel kit and one I picked up in Sydney. I think we need one more, but before I buy another I'll need to know it will work in China and the rest of SE Asia. Transformers are massive and expensive so we're staying pat with one until charging logistics become too onerous.

I had to unplug the computer this morning so I could use its converter plug with the transformer to charge the fourth camera battery, so I'd better finish up before I run out of power.

Paul