To Laptop or Not To Laptop

One of the things I’ve been trying to decide is whether to bring my laptop around the world with me on my bike. While you can do almost everything on your smartphone these days, there are a few things I wanted to have the laptop for:

1. Working – if I decide to stop somewhere and find some contract work, I will need a laptop to get that work done.
2. Photo Management – I have an extensive archive of digital photos that take up almost 1TB of space on an external drive. I use Adobe Lightroom to manage them on my laptop.
3. Route planning – This one boggles my mind, but it’s nearly impossible to plan a route on your phone and send it to your Garmin without a computer! (See below; I found a way, but it’s not pretty!)
4. Blogging – Typing on a keyboard is way nicer than on the tiny iPhone screen.

But, here are the issues with bringing a laptop:

• It’s bulky – even my 13″ MacBook (one of the smallest laptops around) will barely fit in my Camelbak.
• It’s heavy (relatively) – the MacBook weighs in around 2 lbs plus the charger, USB dongle, etc., and it’s 3.5 lbs, which is a significant portion of my ultralight setup.
• Charging – It won’t charge with my 5W solar panel, so keeping it charged will be a challenge, plus I’ll need an international adapter.
• Not waterproof – I’ll have to keep it in a dry bag to keep it from getting wet when it rains.
• Somewhat fragile – It will need a lot of padding in my bag.
• Theft target – It’s not something I’ll want to flash around, or else it might get pilfered.

So, my decision right now is NOT to bring it. Here’s how I’ll solve each of the original items.

1. Working

I’ll keep my laptop with a friend or family member, and if I need to work, either they can ship it to me, or I can buy a used one and restore from cloud backup, whichever turns out to be easier with customs.

2. Photo Management

Still trying to figure this one out, but it turns out that my Google Drive account has unlimited storage with the plan that I have, so I’m looking into moving my photos there and managing them somehow from my phone.

3. Route Planning

Okay, here’s how you create a route on your phone and send it wirelessly to your Garmin! A ridiculous process, but I tried it last night, and it works. It will suffice for when I don’t have access to a computer, but it’s horribly convoluted.

• First, create a route with something that will export to GPX (I like Strava because it knows where riders actually ride and usually picks the best routes):
  • Visit strava.com in Safari on your phone (don’t use the Strava app!).
  • Go to Dashboard -> My Routes
  • Create New Route
  • The route builder is wonky on mobile, but it does work.
  • Save the route.
• Export to GPX and save to Google Drive.
• Visit www.gpsies.com in Safari (Chrome doesn’t work) and select Convert.
  • Choose the GPX file from Google Drive.
  • Export as “GPX Track”.
  • Under Options, put 15 mph for the speed. (any speed will work but you have to enter something)
  • Convert, and save the output GPX to Google Drive.
• Now, visit connect.garmin.com on Safari on your phone (do not use the Garmin Connect app!). (Again, you have to use Safari, not Chrome)
  • Tap the + button in the top-right to add an activity and select “Upload your activities”.
  • Go to “Manual Import” and tap to upload. Choose the converted GPX file from Google Drive.
  • It should upload the “activity”. If you get an error, the conversion may not have worked or you picked the wrong GPX.
• Now for the fun part! This created a fake activity in your activity log. You don’t actually want this to show up, so eventually you will delete it. But first,
  • Find the activity in Garmin Connect (website not app) and tap it. (For me, the date was set to 12/31/2009.)
  • Tap the gear icon and select “Save as Course”.
  • Enter a name for the course and save it. Then select “Send to Device”. (Don’t even try to edit it on the phone; the Garmin route editor is unusable on mobile; it barely works on a computer!)
  • Open the Garmin Connect app on your phone and sync via Bluetooth to get the course to transfer.
• Not done yet, you need to cleanup.
  • Delete the fake activity in Garmin Connect.
  • If you have Strava sync setup, it’s likely that Strava will also have the fake activity, so open the Strava app and go delete it.

4. Blogging

It looks like there are some nice lightweight folding keyboard options out there, so I’m looking into some of these. Worst case, I’ll deal with the on-screen keyboard and dictation when possible.

Any suggestions?