Charley Miller

Charlene "Charley" Miller travels as often as she can manage to find the time. She is currently completing her medical degree at the University of Minnesota and looking into residency programs. After receiving a degree, she hopes to work with an organization like Doctors without Borders or the Red Cross for a few years. Having traveled to many third world countries, she has a very clear understanding of the need for trained medical personel in these countries.

Charley is 28 years old and lives with her partner Pat. Charley's favorite food is sushi, and she has an eclectic taste in music including bluegrass, folk, jazz, Johnny Cash, and a fondness for old John Denver. She plays the guitar fairly well, but doesn't have much time for it these days.

Before moving onto the next stage in her education, she hopes to take a trip somewhere exotic, perhaps even volunteer somewhere for a time. Charley's favorite trip was a six month trek in South East Asia during the year between undergrad and med school. She prefers active travel to cultural travel and usually spends a great deal of time compiling information from various sources. She frequently travels with Pat, who is quite satisfied to tag along with whatever she decides to do. She's never been able to find one information resource that provides all the information she needs from arriving in a city airport to getting to her destination, usually an under-developed area of the country. Currently Charley's planning on her trip during spring break, which will be hiking around somewhere in California for a week.

• Needs to reduce the amount she carries, especially the weight of her guidebook.
  
• Wants to learn about each destination, interested in the people, history and
  environment of each place.
  
• She wants to have fun, meet new people, and do different and interesting things.
  
• She is seeking out the odd and unusual in each place, looking for novel and diverse
  activities.
  
• Wants a broad range and depth of information to research through pre-departure.
  
• Although she researches extensively, she only wants to take the necessary
  information with her while on the road.
  
• She wants to make plans on the road, to allow for as much flexibility as possible.
  
• To have just the information she needs, and only the information she needs.

[Returns and further edits an existing guide]

Charley is planning a trip to California for spring break. She only has ten days, so she wants to plan her trip with some detail, but she wants to remain flexible as well. She has decided that she would like to see both sides of California - big city and nature - so she plans to base herself in San Francisco and make day trips from there, perhaps spending a few nights in campgrounds or b&b's.

She likes to use TraveLite because she is a recent Palm convert and likes to do everything she can without paper. She has the site bookmarked at school and pops in when she has a free moment between classes. She already has an account and types in her username and password. The site welcomes her with a summary of guides she's bought in the past and guides she is building but has not yet purchased. This is one of her favorite ways of planning trips, doing a little research at a time and adding destinations to her guide as she learns of new places to visit.

She has already started a guide for this trip. She chooses this guide for editing.

She has already included information about Napa Valley in the guide, but wants to spend some time adding information about San Francisco. She knows she would like to see the Mission and Alcatraz, and that she would like to stay in a mid priced hotel in a safe neighborhood. She also loves food and wants to sample lots of ethnic food while she's in the city (she is from Minnesota, after all).

When she is finished adding information about San Francisco, she adds information about Marin.

When she is finished, she decides she would like to see what her current guide looks like and how much it is. On looking at the overview, she decides she will not have time to visit Napa after all and deletes that section from her guide. Since she will be cutting two days in Napa, she decides to look for one more destination that will take a day. She decides to add content for the South Bay. She is thinking of doing her residency there and wants to see how bad it really is. When she has added the level of detail she wants, she returns to the guide summary page. Now she feels that she has a guide she likes. She isn't quite ready to buy and she has a class to get to, so she saves her guide to work on some more later.