now it stands as the following…

Day 1- Leave 2pm Wednesday Drive to Mildura – Wednesday
546 km – about 6 hours 52 mins

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Day 2 Mildura to Roxby Downs – Thursday
795 km – about 10 hours 15 mins

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Day 3 Roxby Downs to Coober Pedy – Friday
450 km – about 5 hours 17 mins

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Then to come home

Coober Pedy to Adelaide – Thursday
844 km – about 10 hours 10 mins

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Adelaide to Melbourne – Saturday
727 km – about 9 hours 36 mins

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or to put it another way… minimum distance will be 3,363 km – about 1 day 18 hours (total driving) which if we got 400k per tank (which is easy enough to do the car has done 600k on a single tank) will be around 8 fuel stops at say $50 per fill up or around $400 in fuel… plus another $200 in accommodation along the way (on the way up only)… so the trip will cost in the ball park of $600 to do.

This time we are driving to Coober Pedy at Easter to stay at a friends sisters dug out. Hazzah….

The car is booked in for a service in a couple of days… but here is the initial planning for the route over at least….

And yes like #wtrip08 it will be geotagged, geotwitted and geophotos to the death

Day 1 – Leave Work at 4pm and get a bit of the trip out of the way

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Day 2 – Long Drive

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Day 3 – Arrive Coober Pedy (Look at Woomera On the Way )

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I have been known to park in the carpark and surf for weather information when driving up in the Hills of Melbourne, but if I can go into a store and get a coffee (a real one not that crap hot water stuff) I might just do that to check emails (or even twitter) whilst I am out having a drive.

http://www.freewifi.com.au/listing_mcdonalds_summary.php has a great list of what stores have free wifi and what stores don’t.

Now before you all think I have turned into another mcdonalds advertising agent… lets look at this from a differenet prespective.  Firstly, it shows that the Telstra pricing model didn’t work!.. If it had macca’s wouldn’t be making it free!  Secondly the “free wifi” with your Iphone for telstra users also wasn’t working, and for the same reason….  Perhaps despite all the hype there were just not enough Iphone users going to maccas for a burger and wifi.

See I am not a Telstra users (I have a back 3g sim that I use on long road trips) and I am not an Iphone user, so the Wifi at maccas cost 20c a minute for me.  That starts to add up quickly when you think about out.  Now of course this all new all free maccas does come with a caveat… Internet sessions are not time-constrained but do have a 50MB limit applied. Which is the equivilent of using the Sydney morning Hearld home page for under an hour (the page weight is over a meg and it auto refreshes!)  But if you are smart and use the mobile friendly pages you can stretch that out for a bit of surfing…

Take this photo for example.. Maccas wifi on Swanston Street was turned off during renovations.. and so they put aup  sorry sign.  The reason for the sign is expectation.  Even for the paid model.  But soon it will be free. What that means now also is that FREE Wifi is starting to be seen as something fast food and cafes need to have. I know that I make decisions on where to go for a relaxing coffee based on who has wifi and who doesn’t, and I know that once kids work out that Maccas has free wifi and hungry jacks doesn’t the kids with their iphones and nokias are netbooks e.t.c are going to hang around up the front.

Gen C makes content, Gen C shares content, and now maccas has acutally become an enabler in this.