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*Editor's note: Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is making a 60-day, 15,000-mile drive around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He's filing occasional reports from the road. *
Another week, another continent. As I write this (on my trusty iPad) we are blasting across Europe. The Fiesta World Tour 2010 has left The New World behind and is heading deep into the Old World. The Middle East is on the horizon and Asia is not far off.
The last week in the U.S. and Canada was nothing but gadget hassle. The once-wonderful Virgin MiFi became a liability for all of us when it refused to do the one job it was designed to do and had, up to then, been doing brilliantly: Be a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in our Ford Fiesta.
Sleep is a luxury on a global drive so I did not enjoy wasting an hour to the useless Virgin Mobile help desk, only to be told their server was down. The advice from the same desk the next morning was to reboot the device using a paperclip. Not easy at 70mph on I-95.
But for the last day of the U.S. leg the MiFi finally started working and found me (via my iPad) a great place for breakfast between Boston and NYC: the Cosmic Omelet in Manchester CT. Then it helped guide us (when the TomTom and in-car satellite navigation system did not) to the spot I had found on GoogleEarth from which to film our arrival in The Big Apple.
The second technical hiccup came when I gave up trying to ignite my Spot Satellite Messenger for you guys to follow our progress. I called FindMeSpot's 800 number, only to be told the one I had bought from BestBuy in LA was a recalled unit. The Spot public relations people FedExed one to me in time for me to get it going for the last few miles of the U.S. trip. It is now well up and running and you can see where we have been at. But I will turn it off when we are in more sensitive areas.
Leg 2 started in Ireland, on the far side of The Pond, at the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival. (Don't ask.) I'd hoped for a Guinness gadget of some kind from Dublin but only when we got across to Wales did the gadgets start ramping up.
Welsh is a revived language, and it's thriving so well that there is even a Welsh version of Scrabble. There are no Z's, but you get maximum points if you can use the A. We played it on the railway station of the town with what I believe is the longest URL the world.
In England we stopped by our headquarters in the Inc office where gadgets galore were stacked for our next leg.
- Iridium satellite phone
- Camping Gaz car cool box
- Eigenharp computer instrument
- Handpresso pump action espresso maker
- Car kettle (a hand espresso machine needs hot water)
- European TomTom app for the iPhone
- Apple wireless keyboard for the iPad
- 2 Lifeventure first aid kits
At $2 a minute the Iridium satellite phone is cheaper than most cell phones' international roaming rates. Plus, it can connect almost anywhere in the world. It will come into its own in the Arabian Desert and the Australian Outback, but for now it is a good back up even in well-celled Euroland. It has a roof-mounted antenna which stuck fast even at 125 mph on the Autobahn.
The cooler is also about to come in handy as we get close to the Mediterranean and temperatures rise. Not so in the Alps, where fellow tourists in the Austrian Tirol are slightly puzzled by the sight of a man (my colleague Colin, shown in the photo at the top of this story) in a loud shirt sitting on a rock with an Apple laptop with an unusual device plugged into it.
The Eigenharp looks very stylish, has many keys on it and is being blown into. But so far the noise coming out is more raspberry than rhapsody.
This amazing instrument is being hailed as one of the most radical instruments introduced in the last 60 years. Have a look on YouTube and you’ll see what all the fuss is about. It’s amazing the sounds that a practiced player can get from the Harp.
Ours is the new Pico version, a more compact yet equally versatile version of the original Eigenlabs Alpha model. At £395 the Pico is also more affordable. The most impressive thing about this instrument is that even someone who has been struggling with the guitar for 20 years and who cannot begin to play any other instrument, could within a short time start to have a lot of fun with the Pico. With a bit more practice the tourists might actually stop and listen rather than stop and stare.
The Alps is a rest on route to Mantova, Italy. We're having an audience with Pierpaolo Segre, master espresso maker and a teacher at Illy’s University of Coffee in Trieste. We all know that Italians love their coffee, but it comes as a surprise just how serious the business of making the perfect cup of espresso is.
"It is no different from a wine," explains Segre. "Poorly prepared, a good cup of espresso can be completely ruined."
Talk about pressure.
There’s a long queue outside Illy’s temporary classroom in Mantova’s town square. We’ve managed to sneak in before the next tutorial session for an invaluable one-to-one with Professor Espresso.
"The first thing you must do is make sure the machine is completely clean. Next, set the temperature just right. You’re looking for a water temperature of 90degrees centigrade," he says.
Segre demonstrates the art of compressing the coffee just the correct amount and runs through a few common mistakes. But the best way to learn in a limited amount of time is to make a cup for real.
We move to a classic Italian café on the east side of Mantova’s main piazza. At the back is the most wonderfull Illy espresso machine. Under Segre’s watchful eye (and the café owner’s nervous gaze) Illy coffee beans are ground and then compressed using a special hand press. Then the cup is fitted to the machine, temperature checked and the button pressed.
So sir, how did we do?
"The coffee is the right colour, bubbles indicate slightly too high a temperature, and you’ve splashed coffee up the sides of the cup and down the outside," he says.
We then take the prof out to our own kitchen: the passenger seat of our Fiesta. Our Handpresso is our mobile espresso machine and Colin is our guinea pig barista. The boy does well, inserting a coffee capsule into the unit, adding hot water whilst perched on his lap (!) and then pumping the handle like crazy to get enough pressure for the espresso.
"Not bad!" says the professor generously. "Now you can have a little bit of Italy even in the desert."
As you can tell from following us on the Spot tracker, we spent a while in Italy. That meant a mad dash to the ferry for Greece and onto Turkey -- the last stop in Europe.
Next week, we'll be filing our report from the Middle East. Talk to you then!
See also:
- Travelling Around the World in a Gadget-Filled Ford Fiesta
- From An Irish Matchmaker To The Best Road Ever
- Firearms, Boots and Dirty Cars as Canvases
- Rockford Spins, Drive-Thru Weddings and Flatbread Tacos
http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/ford-fiesta-world-tour-2010/
