Shutter Remote

I've been doing a fair amount of research on night photography and longer exposures recently. It's an area I've never really experimented with. I found some really neat photos where you can see the rotation of the earth with star streaks and the photographers on flickr are awesome enough to disclose all of the information about multi-hour exposure times etc... I thought I'd give it a try so I drove out to my mother's house in Baldwin, MD one night because there's less light pollution out there. I set up the tripod and got the camera all set up only to discover that the longest my shutter can remain open is 30 seconds standalone. I sat down with my manual for about an hour and it specifies that for exposures longer than 30 seconds the camera must be set in 'bulb' mode. I went out and set everything up again but apparently "bulb" mode requires that you physically hold the shutter release. I wasn't about to do that for an extended period of time so I called it a night. I did some more research and realized that for exposures longer than 30 seconds a remote (with lock) is needed. Blah.... more money. I ordered the remote from amazon: $70.00. Hopefully it will be here by the end of the week so I can play.