Converters, Inverters, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

The turtle leads a simple and uncomplicated life; his shell protects him and he has relatively little to do to maintain it. To him, it is just a hard, helpful, second skin. The WLW is not remotely so low maintenance, though it does aspire to provide the same protection – and more. The modern tramp wants to take his world with him: music, satellite, telephones, computers (the desire for the simple life can be too simple after all and one does not wish to be cut off from friends, culture or news). Indeed, the WLW makers know this and have photos of interiors not just with beautiful bathrooms and well equipped kitchens but with flat screen TV’s and satellite dishes that automatically retract when the engine starts up. All this requires on the part of the tramp and his companion a deep understanding of not just simple mechanics about which you have heard more than enough (and with luck will never hear of again), but also of electricity and plumbing.

Imagine then the surprise we all had, when trying to turn on the Nespresso machine, and the soothing blinking green lights did not come on. One can survive without a hairdryer (more of which later) but can one survive without the morning cappuccino or the evening espresso? As we were to discover when the reason was discovered, no power would be coming to the computers or the phones either. Luckily being a short distance from the factory (the discovery having been made in the parking lot of Edeka where we were having lunch – as one apparently does on such journeys), we were able to return to diagnose the problem. After all, not being able to enjoy a morning coffee could prove to be a travel breaker. The irony was not lost on our intrepid sales director since he had gone to great lengths to build the perfect home for the now useless machine. (we needn’t go into the number of email exchanges discussing the location of the special shelf for said machine between the tramp and the ISD; suffice it to say the are both German).

Dear reader, those of you with superior knowledge to the trampess, will know that all this modern equipment is designed to use a minimum of power – and even the Nespresso machine has only a simple demand for power. Sadly these simple demands are below the radar of the inverter which waits until it has a big “hello, give me some juice” before it sends power around the circuit. The technical men hummed and hawed and realised this problem was both systemic and critical to almost any modern tramp. Of course the first test of the system was to bring in a hair dryer - from the one of the engineers - as I have said before, I can live without one . A hair dryer is not a modest consumer and lets her needs be known immediately. The inverter immediately came to her rescue and the lights started flashing on the coffee machine (visions of George Clooney with a satisfied look on his face while drinking an espresso returned to the trampess’s head). And indeed the coffee machine, having had its need established in the brain of the inverter, continued to function without the hair dryer’s continued use. Not so the computers! To keep them charging the hair dryer had to be on!! It is intuitively obvious to the casual observer that one can hardly imagine having to use a hair dryer the entire time one wants to be on line! Even were I to aspire to locks like Dolly Parton, this would be overkill. Not to mention not green.

And so a second, low demand electrical circuit was devised. And now, even the Nespresso works without a hair drier (or pomade). It was not a matter of hours, but future WLW owners will suffer less because of our experience. And so once again,