The mobile office Redeux

This is a blog entry that began almost a week ago, when I was taking Amtrak’s Acela to DC from New Haven, Connecticut.

I boarded the train with a suitcase I knew I didn’t have to open, and my iPad carried lightly in my purse. I was equally pleased with my carbon footprint (despite the hour drive to the nearest station) and the efficiency with which I was prepared to read manuscripts, send email, and maybe even download a new book to read in the 4 hours it would take to arrive in Washington, where I was looking forward to a visit with my oldest friend and a conference which I always find invigorating.

For those of you outside the Northeast, Acela is the business-class train from Boston to our nation's capital. It is more expensive, depending on the time of day. All cars have free WiFi. That's why I was looking forward to being online even though my iPad has no 3G, and I don’t try to type on my Blackberry.

What Acela doesn’t have is any better track bed than the regular Amtrak trains, which is why it is not what any European or Japanese would call a “fast” train, and it only saves you time (30 minutes from New York to DC) because of fewer stops.

The first hour and a half of my trip I was a very happy camper.

I browsed the NY Times, efficiently read and sorted email, mostly newsletters that early in the morning, and enjoyed being in “The Quiet Car.” The Times had a great review of a new book that sounded very interesting, and I opened the iBookstore App, where, not surprisingly, the book wasn't on sale, since only about 20 percent of eBooks are so far. Barnes and Noble didn't have the eBook yet either, but the Kindle edition was already online. Seconds later the book was on my iPad and I was glad to find it as interesting as the review predicted.

Feeling happy as a Nerd in Bits, I proceeded to start writing a blog entry about my digital success. Not wanting to bother cutting and pasting, through my iPad Pages program, I went online opened my Google blog and began writing.

I was in the middle of waxing eloquent, when the Acela WiFi connection broke. And, of course, my draft disappeared, and I cursed my stupidity for not writing off line. My bad. We had just pulled into New York's Penn Station. I thought going underground might be the problem, and I bravely vowed to rewrite from scratch and post when we had passed through Newark.

Unfortunately, for the next three and a half my iPad network recognized and let me connect to the Acela WiFi -- only to drop me anytime I wanted to download or refresh an App. I was so preoccupied with trying again and again to get the WiFi working, I didn’t spend time recreating my enthusiastic endorsement of the new mobile office.
I didn't want to hassle the conductors for tech advice, because the car was crowded. I could read, and because of the iPad, I could choose from over 25 books I had downloaded since April, some of them well worth rereading already.

Of course, I had to reward my one success with WiFi by opening the new book. The best part of train travel for me is enough time to read (unlike planes) and no highway motion sickness. I was dozing comfortably in minutes. When I woke around Baltimore, I thought I would just plug in headphones and wait until later in the day to go back online.

Then I remembered that my host had said she only had email at work. Suddenly I knew my poet friend probably would not have WiFi. To add to my consternation, I had not done a new synch with my Blackberry with all the DC contact info I needed; I had not researched the DC WiFi hotspots or downloaded a Metro transit map or street guide. I have often been a tourist and business traveler in DC, but not often enough to avoid getting lost while I try to adjust to a city unlike the easy grid of Manhattan and. Subway system with variable fares and lines with no obvious way to tell “uptown” from “downtown.”

I had to resort tom calling home so my spouse could read me the right phone number off my left-behind-because-too-heavy laptop.

Who failed whom? Do I regret depending on the iPad? Not at all. Do I think I know how to use the electronics I have already bought? No way.

Do I wish that Amtrak trains got to DC faster than they did 40 years ago when I took the first “Metroliner” on a High School trip?

You betcha!

To be continued