By: Blonde Two
I have been pondering with myself (is that possible) recently about how to manage my lovely shiny smartphone whilst the Two Blondes are out Dartmoor expeditioning this year. It has been great all year for photos (all of its 12 megapixels seem pretty mega), for musical minibus entertainment (the kids, if only they knew who the Two Blondes were, might disagree with me here) and for internet type info. For example, at Ten Tors weekend, I was talking in a strange Twitter code with some “friends-on-the-ground” when we didn’t know where our 35 Mile team had got to.
There are two Dartmoor things that I haven’t used my phone for. The first is GPS tracking – some people track their teams across the moors in this way. To date, the Two Blondes favour the “wait-and-wonder-where-they-are” method of youngster tracking. Much more of an adrenaline rush that way! The other way in which my phone has been little used is for is talking to people. The one time the youngsters called me instead of Blonde One, I couldn’t work out how to answer it quickly enough and they gave up and called her. This year, however, my number will be on some important bits of paper and I will have to hone my response skills.
It seems like a grand idea to have one device that can do all of these things but I have been worrying a bit about how one battery can last through all of my photography, texting, Twittering and emergency phoning. We have a PowerMonkey but as yet power has not been installed at any of Dartmoor’s many tors.
The good news is that I need to worry no longer about about whether or not my phone battery will last. The bad news is that I dropped it in a bog on Tuesday and I wasn’t on Dartmoor at the time! Now the battery won’t do anything at all.
With regard to the safe planning of “all your eggs” locations. It has occurred to me that it would be better not to put all of our technology needs into one device. How about a separate music device, GPS tracker, camera and phone? Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before? All we need is trousers with an awful lot of pockets.
Always carry two phones! On different networks. Had to get minibus 12v sockets reactivated (to school’s incredulity!) to do a weekend of signal searching. Power monkey ok but I’ve got an old one and it doesn’t like apples…(only bananas?)
Take the battery out of the phone NOW and dry it very gently – this might take a couple of days.
I assume the battery was in the phone – if so, dry the phone out very gently too. The battery MUST be out of the phone.
When the couple of days is passed, put both the phone and the battery (battery still removed) into a jar of (dry!) lentils / rice / barley – this will remove the last bit of moisture that remains.
Again, this could take time – perhaps a week.
Then stick it all back together, buy a Silva compass, semaphore flags and one of those fancy flare guns….or some nice firework rockets!
Good luck with it – it’s just so easy for that sort of thing to happen.
JJ
I must make a note of the drying-out-phones advice – most useful. I’d never have thought of rice or lentils (except to eat!) Well, what fun – your emergency food supply could be your emergency phone supply too!
You can get little canoeists totally waterproof pockets for mobile phones – think some of them are see-through feel-through, too. If you are planning to drop it in the river, recommend a cork-on-a-string as well. 🙂 x