Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Need Some Kindling?


Amazon.com has begun marketing a new device which allows a kayaker to potentially take tons of reading material along on paddling trips. One simply downloads whatever books you feel like reading from the Amazon site, pack your 'Kindle Reader' in a drybag and, voila, you're set for all those nasty days when you can't get out on the water!

Or are you? Looking over some of the comments on Wikipedia and elsewhere, I think the savy paddler could do much better. For example, I carry an aging Palm PDA on which I keep several 'ebooks' ready to read. But there's more! I used it to take photos of my recent car crash site which I sent off to the insurance company. They clearly showed the other driver to be at fault. I keep a complete set of tide tables for the east coast of North America as well as some topo maps of areas I paddle in (these are too small to navigate with, but would be helpful in an emergency). I keep a list of contacts, a trip diary and... well, the list goes on and on. The point being that a PDA is far more functional than the 'Kindle' at this point if you're looking for some easy-to-pack books. If you need kindling, take a stroll along the beach!

2 comments:

Kristen said...

I'm currently reading Jill Fredston's Rowing to Latitude (wonderful). Made me smile when she mentioned packing away ten books each for their long summer trips - wonder if they've upgraded to the PDA?

Michael said...

Kristen - let me know what you think about Rowing to Latitude. I read it last fall. I'm reading 'Atom' right now, on my PDA, of course! ;-)