Gear: Road Trip Buddy

Product name: Verizon-connected Kyocera Wireless access card

WORDS & PICTURE BY TIM WATKIN

Our Verizon wireless card’s most famous moment was at a Motel 6 in New Mexico. We’d found a rate online earlier in the day, but the woman in the office was refusing to honor it. So we went back to the car and booked a room at the cheaper rate on our Sony Vaio laptop.

You may think only businesspeople have a use for wireless access cards – which plug in the side of your laptop and give you broadband internet access anywhere there’s a mobile phone signal. Forget that. They’re just as helpful on holidays. When my wife and I drove from New Hampshire to California - via Bar Harbor and New Orleans – it worked a treat. We could check our email in the morning and upload photos. As we drove, we looked up roadside attractions we might otherwise drive past. We could even use Skype to make phone calls. Then, later in the afternoon, having gone wherever the road led, we could decide where we wanted to stay the night. A quick search, and we had a bed booked and waiting for us before we hit town.

Some may argue it takes the John Kerouac-style romance out of follow-your-nose road trips, but really all it means that you can see round the next bend, whichever bend you choose to follow. As travelers, we could be both flexible and prepared at the same time. And really, that’s the perfect combination when you’re on the road.

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