We’re in Newark, waiting out the six hour layover. Whew, it’s been a long morning. We didn’t go to bed until about 1am, and the alarm went off at 4am. I really thought I’d be in bed by 10pm, but circumstances didn’t play along nicely.

The flight from Austin was uneventful. Unless you count my awesome breakfast sitting in first class, now that was an event. Fresh fruit bowl, yogurt, cinnamon roll, mushroom omelet, potato pancake, sausage, and a thick slice of ham. And coffee. Kevin choose to nap thru breakfast.

We’re at the Continental President’s Club right now. This is my first time in the club, it is pretty cool, as I knew it would be. Free drinks are great, but the locker service is the most useful feature. Well, besides free wi-fi.

Here’s what’s going on: Nathan, Elvi, and Chris have all been over to the house to get their assignments for watching the house while we’re gone. I just finished packing, and need to get our paperwork together and do the dishes. . Kevin just mowed the front lawn, got his hair trimmed, and is upstairs packing. Oh, and I need to shower and do my hair tonight before bed so that I can just throw on clothes and go in the morning.

I had hoped to go to bed at 10pm, it looks like it may be closer to 11pm. Better get moving…

I am thrilled that I just saved an extra $100 on the already-lowest price I could find for a 5 day car rental in Italy.

For a Fiat Grande Punto, an economy car just the right size for tiny Italian streets and parking spaces, I checked multiple companies and tried as many different discount codes I could find with Google. For instance, at Hertz.com I tried three different discount codes, the best deal coming from a Continental Airlines discount. The best Hertz price was $521 after adding in the optional “super coverage” insurance and converting euros to dollars. At AutoEurope.com, the exact same car is $428 including full insurance, quoted in dollars. Then I found that by calling in to AutoEurope and mentioning the SlowTravel.com discount code 99006630, I could get an additional 5% discount.

But here is the real trick… the Canadian AutoEurope.ca website shows a much lower price for the exact same car, and their full insurance includes a zero deductible! You do not have to be a Canada resident, you just have to pay in Canadian dollars. Since the Canadian dollar is practically equal to the US dollar, this is a seriously good deal.

I called AutoEurope at 1-888-223-5555, set up the rental details, gave them the Slow Travel discount number, and asked about getting the Canadian price. The total price quoted was $328, which is $100 less than the regular US price! Even if my credit card charges me a currency exchange fee, I still come out way ahead. Woo-hoo!

I created a new page on this website with our trip itinerary. See the button at the top of the page, just under the picture? Check it out!

Last weekend Kevin & I set out on a roadtrip to Llano, TX to test out our car-based electronics (and really to eat at the famous Cooper’s BBQ, which was excellent). I took the following in a tote bag:

• Asus EEE 4G PC
• Gisteq PhotoTrackr BT
• Wagan SmartAC 120
• USB cable
• Bluetooth dongle

While driving in Switzerland and Italy, this setup will give me real-time navigation with driving instructions, while also recording (aka data logging) our trip path. The recorded GPS data can be used to tag our photographs (geotagging) with location information, so twenty years from now I can look at our digital photos and see exactly where they were taken on a map.

Here is how they all connect: The Wagan SmartAC plugs in the car’s DC power outlet. The EEE’s AC electric plugs into the Wagan. The GPS connects to the EEE by either USB cable or bluetooth. USB is my preference, just because it uses less power and seems anecdotally more reliable.

The little GPS unit does not have a screen, it actually looks like a pager (remember those?), so it has to hook up to a PC or mobile phone that has a map program to show location data. On my EEE I have Microsoft Streets & Trips loaded for US maps, and Microsoft AutoRoute loaded for Europe maps — these are essentially the exact same program just with different maps. Both allow me to create and save detailed trip routes with driving directions, route times, and POIs with as many en route stops as I like. When I connect the GPS unit, the software recognizes it and will show me, in real-time, exactly where I am on the map, where my turns are, and how fast we are moving. It even has built in voice. Cool!

Taking the practice roadtrip was a very good idea, because it failed. By failed, I mean I could hook up everything and all the devices were in operation, but I could not get the EEE to recognize the GPS — an essential operation in this plan! I have made this all work before, but on another computer, so I knew I must be missing some device driver, etc. Spent a lot of time sitting in the passenger seat mucking around to get it working with no luck, and missed a lot of the pretty Spring wildflowers. Never could get it to work at all. Argh.

After a few days of thinking about it, the solution finally dawned on me. It wasn’t that I was missing any drivers or software, it is that I wasn’t connecting things in the right order. For future reference, here is the solution:

• GPS must be off.
• On pc, open the Gisteq PhotoTrackr software.
• Still off, connect the GPS via USB cable to pc.
• The Gisteq software will recognize it and turn it on as a COM port device. Bingo!
• Open Streets & Trips or AutoRoute software. Go to the GPS pane and choose to connect. Have it scan your COM ports, it will find it and list it. Choose the correct port from the list and complete the setup.
• Hopefully, for the time you have been connected the GPS will have acquired a satellite fix. If not, let it do so now. Done!

I’m going to give this process a run through this weekend when I go to the San Marcos outlet malls. Now that I remember the secret to connecting, I don’t believe I will have any problems.