Extreme Work Requires Extreme
Mobility
Mobile Computing Magazine
February 2002
Edited by William Terdoslavich
People need to take their
notebooks, cell phones and digital cameras wherever they go.
Today, that includes outer space, way beneath the deep blue sea
and everywhere in between.
A Journey Mark
Twain Would Envy
(Excerpted from a larger article)
By Michelle Leader
Around 7 a.m. each day – yes, even on weekends – Mike Clark,
Dave Freeman and Eric Frost prepare for their day: They roll up
their sleeping bags and strike their tent, change into their work
clothes, which are typically cleaner versions of what they’ve
slept in the night before, and begin to prepare their breakfast of
grits, oatmeal and Pop Tarts smeared with peanut butter – high-carb
foods designed to fuel a morning of heavy activity. By the end of
the day, assuming that the weather is good and nothing goes too
wrong, the three will have paddled 40 to 50 miles down the mighty
Mississippi River.
But
the three men, ages 24 to 41, who set off from Lake Itasca in
northern Minnesota in early September, aren’t just paddling down
the Mississippi because they have nothing better to do, although
that’s partly the case. They’re trying to teach elementary
school children about what it’s like to set off on a 2,300-mile
journey via canoe, much the way that Jacques Marquette and Louis
Joliet did more than 350 years ago.
One big difference is that these three modern-day explorers
post daily updates on their Web site, bigmuddyadventure.com. To do
that, they’re carrying more than 60 pounds of equipment – two
Gateway Solo 5100s with 20GB hard drives and 128MB of RAM, an
older Compaq Presario with a 3GB hard drive and 64MB of RAM, six
lithium-ion batteries, several cell phones and assorted batteries,
two Ositech King of Clubs cellular modems, a Qualcomm Globalstar
satellite phone (for the times when they can’t get cellular
coverage), a Casio digital camera and a JVC video camera.
"All that gear adds a lot of weight," says Freeman,
who’s worked as a dog-sled and canoe guide and who came up with
the idea for the river expedition. Freeman writes most of the
online diary entries. He was able to convince Gateway and Ositech
to donate equipment to the cause.
All that equipment plus the men are packed into a
20.5-foot-long Wenonah Kevlar canoe, which is designed so
individuals can paddle at the same time. Together, they’re able
to cover about five miles of river per hour, which is no faster
than their predecessors. In a typical day, they can paddle for
around 10 hours, taking a short break for lunch.
Compare that to Joliet and Marquette, whose most advanced
technology was a couple of muskets and ammunition. Together with
five helpers, they set off in 1673 in two canoes made of birch
bark, laden with enough Indian corn and smoked meat to last the
length of their journey, which covered about 2,500 miles in four
months. When the Frenchmen tired of eating that, they shot wild
ducks and caught bass in the river. Unlike their predecessors,
Freeman and his partners go to a local supermarket near the river
when they get bored with what they have brought. Otherwise, they
supplement their store-bought diet with a little fishing.
Every now and then, students who have been following the trio’s
adventures online show up along the river with snacks. When they
reached LaCrosse, Wis., at the beginning of October, for example,
about 100 youths who had been following their travels online met
them and even paddled a short distance with the three men.
"People seem really interested in this once we tell them
about it, but getting them to use the technology can be a
challenge," notes Frost, 24, who recently graduated from
college with an education degree and has high hopes of becoming a
teacher. Clark, who at 41 is the oldest team member, spent 15
years as a teacher in Chicago before relocating to St. Louis in
mid-2000. The three men met through mutual friends and decided to
set off on the adventure because "we’re not really employed
right now," Freeman says.
After paddling all day, the men pull up at a sandbar along the
Mississippi or preferably a state campground, where they take
advantage of an electrical outlet to recharge their equipment and
make dinner. (Macaroni and cheese is a particular favorite.) Then
they update the Web site, posting new pictures about the people
they’ve met and birds and animals they’ve seen so students can
follow along in class the next day.
Of course, by focusing the site on elementary school children,
the three adventurers tend to field a variety of questions.
"One of the first things they ask is, ‘Where do you go to
the bathroom?’" Freeman says. The answer, he muses, is
probably similar to one that Joliet and Marquette would have given
had they been asked. "I tell them that we squat in the
woods," Freeman says. "To them, that’s the funniest
thing."
