Geeks on Tour Blog

Look Up

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:55:00 +0000

Blogger recently added the ability to have menu items which take the reader to different web pages completely. So, I've added our other websites to this menu ... above (www.geeksontour.blogspot.com). These are the places we are constantly referring people to. If you want to see what we're talking about with our Tutorial Videos, you can click on the menu above for Our Tutorial Videos. If you've missed getting lots of computer tips in this blog, you can click on the menu item above for Our Business Blog. And, we especially hope you click on our Facebook page and be sure to 'Like' it!

Jim has been working all day every day this week at the Paradise Island booth here at the Tampa RV Supershow. Although he's not working a Geeks on Tour booth - he's seen plenty of people we know here at the show, including the famous author, Nick Russell. In case you don't know Nick - he's best known for his newspaper The Gypsy Journal, and his daily blog. But, that is quickly being overshadowed by becoming the best selling author of Big Lake. Jim and I read it as soon as it came out on Kindle this summer and thoroughly enjoyed it. Big Lake is currently at #3 in Amazon's Book, Mystery and Thriller, Police Procedural category. Even with a sales price of only .99 and giving over half to Amazon - 30,000 sales/mo means some really nice income. C'mon Smile Nick!

I've visited the show once or twice, but for the most part I've been chained to the computer. As many RVers - my office and my dinner table are the same!

We're excited to have a visitor for the weekend. Our old friend John as in' Lynne and John', of Cosmic Muffin fame. We met them in our first few months of fulltime RVing back in 2003. Now they are living (still in their RV) nearTillamook, Oregon. John is in Florida for a few months on a construction project and we were thrilled that he got to come down to Tampa for a couple of days to visit.

And, tonight we're planning to get together with our friends Phil and Tracey from TechnoRV. Nothing better than a few beers to get us to finalize our plans for the the Techno-Geek Learning Rally!

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Is it an RV Show or a Rally?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:43:00 +0000

We’re at the Tampa RV Supershow for this week. It’s part of Jim’s workcamping job to be in the Booth for Paradise Island (Riverstone RV Parks) all week.

You’d think that we’d be here giving our Geeks on Tour computer seminars like we do at the big RV rallies in the summer? It’s been our experience that an RV Show is where people come to shop for new RVs and accessories and not generally to attend seminars. So, we’ve never even looked into speaking here, and we haven’t been invited. Meanwhile, I have a ton of work to do on our website, videos and Picasa book. So, it’s just fine with me to stay in the RV all week while Jim is in at the Booth in the Expo hall. If you’re here at the show, go find Jim and say hi! He’s in building B at the north end (I think) of aisle 100.

Anybody recognize the little Tiki bar? So cute!

When we got here Monday it was the most gorgeous weather possible About 72 degrees, sparkling sunshine and just the tiniest of breezes. That continued thru Tuesday. Jim and I said, “Aha! That’s another difference between a Rally and an RV Show – it *always* rains at rallies! How else do we get to watch RVs being towed out of the mud?

Come to find out there is a rally going on here along with the show. So, guess what? It is POURING today!

I guess it really is a Rally!

I’m definitely not leaving the RV in this! And, I’m glad I got a video recorded earlier because the sound of rain on the roof makes it impossible to record now. I’ll bet some other fulltime RVers can relate to this … the sound of rain on the roof is so romantic when you first start living in an RV but there comes a time when it is just annoying and you’d rather hear yourself think!

That’s OK, I have non-recording work to do too. Picasa has recently upgraded to version 3.9 so I have to revise our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ booklet. There’s really not that much difference in the procedures, but there are a few, and they’ve added quite a bit of stuff. Probably the main reason I need to revise the book is for the screenshots. Since they changed the buttons, and added some tabbed menus – every screen view is changed. aaarrrgghhh

If you use Picasa and are wondering what I’m talking about, you can view one of our recent videos on Youtube. I decided to upload this one -Picasa 3.9: Where did My Buttons Go?- yesterday so even non-members can watch.

Are you a Member of our GeeksonTour.TV website?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:05:00 +0000

I know that a lot of you are members on our business website, so I normally don't write much about it here, on our personal blog – I don’t want to bombard you.

If you are a member, we thank you! Because of you, we can continue this wonderful lifestyle and not have to get a real job! If you aren’t a member, now is the time to join because our prices go up next week. You can read more about it in our latest newsletter.

What is a Membership Website?

Let me give you a look behind the scenes. Our work is Computer Training for Travelers – and we love what we do! In order to make a living at it, we use the Internet and a Membership website. What this means is that our tutorial videos are all available on that site, but if you click to watch one, you will be asked for a username and password. That’s the membership part. We use WordPress to create the website, and a plugin called WishList Member to manage the parts that require a login. We use PayPal to manage the payments so we don’t have to be responsible for handling or storing people’s credit card numbers. Here’s more info on why we think a PayPal account is a good idea for everyone.

As with any way of making a living, there is a lot of work involved. Managing the website is a big job – there are constant updates, and issues to deal with just in making the website work right. Then, of course there are the videos that must be recorded to have something to sell! When we started charging for it in 2008, we had a few dozen videos, now we have over 200.

We also have to work to drum up business. Think of us like Rock Stars (I like that!) we go on tour with our seminars to build recognition and promote our tutorial videos on our website. Some venues pay us a little to present seminars, but many do not. Usually they let us sell our memberships, books, and DVDs. Just like you can buy the Rock Star’s CD after the concert! We also write lots of free articles for our newsletters and other websites.

Many people stay on our free newsletter email lists for years and may never become a paid member. That’s OK! They tell other people about us – it’s how it works. We have over 5,000 email subscribers and about 800 paid members. If everyone became a member – it would be too much work for us! And lots of people receive our free newsletters for a while and then, later, sign up for a paid membership. We like that, the newsletters let them get to know us. We’ve even had some people just send us money to say thank you for all the free information they’ve received over the years!

We also write articles on free websites, like our PicasaTutorials, RV.net, and DigitalRVer. Last but definitely not least, our Facebook page is becoming our favorite way to communicate with everyone and offer free tidbits of our computer training for travelers.

Did I tell you that we love what we do?

Merry Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:12:00 +0000

On the Jetties at Port Everglades, many people gather to view the cruise
ships going by. This is the Allure of the Seas, the largest of all the ships.
It was Christmas Day, complete with Santa Claus!

We had a very odd day for Christmas, but - all in all, I'd call it quite special. Both Jim and I had caught colds. I was on the downhill slide, but he was still in the thick of being sick. We were supposed to pick up my Mom and his Dad and drive up to his sister's house in West Palm. Although we could have taken an Alka Seltzer Plus and felt ok enough to go, I didn't want our gift to everyone to be a cold! So, we called and cancelled and went back to bed.
When we did finally get up, we decided to watch a movie. We had a Netflix DVD that had been hanging around for a couple weeks with no time to watch it. The movie was 'The King's Speech' - wow! it deserves all the accolades and awards it got last year, it really was a great movie. And a 'feel-good' movie too. I love movies. I think it is my favorite treat to stay home and watch a good movie with my sweetie. So, even though we were sick, I was feeling pretty good.
By the time the movie was over, we were fully awake and took advantage of the time to go over some business stuff that we also haven't had any time for. We are giving our seminars to a whole new audience next month. We are booked for the Florida Association of Computer User Groups (FACUG) annual conference on board a cruise ship. We will be presenting two topics: Picasa, and Smart Phones. We've given our Picasa seminar hundreds of times but the smartphone seminar is new and I think it has potential for being very popular. So Jim and I reviewed our materials and made a couple of important decisions on how we will present it. Then we went thru the steps of our new 'coaching call' service for our members, decided it was in working order and sent out an email to a select test group of our members. I'm excited about this one - we'll be making solid one-to-one connections with our members.
By then, Jim was fading, so I turned my attention to Odie. We have been fighting fleas for several weeks (to no avail), and it was time to give Odie another flea bath. I'm beginning to believe what I read on the Internet that the only way to get rid of fleas is by detonating a nuclear warhead! ... but we gotta keep trying.
Jim needed to go back to bed, and I decided I felt good enough to go get Mom and take her for one of her favorite things - a walk on the beach. I decided to go to a different place than normal - down by the jetties at Port Everglades. This was a favorite place of mine growing up here in Fort Lauderdale. I'd walk the beach then climb out on the rocks and meditate on the meaning of life as the boats went in and out of the channel. It's sad that Mom has no clue where she is - she should know those jetties like the back of her hand after having gone in and out of the inlet on boats all her life. When we got there, she said "isn't it interesting how these big rocks are piled up here." That's what alzheimers has done to her.

However - you gotta look at the bright side. She really enjoyed herself! Every experience is a brand new experience and she almost has that wide-eyed wonder of a child. Luckily she is still quite physically fit, so walking on the beach or in a wooded park is no problem and she loves it. It felt so good to share this with her. I didn't even think about the cruise ships going by, but we happened to be there when the Allure of the Seas departed. This is the biggest cruise ship ever constructed and it was quite a sight. On the way home we stopped at the Blue Fish bar and restaurant for a glass of wine and cup of lobster bisque - delicious. When I dropped her off at her assisted-living home, we hugged real tight - sharing a nothing-held-back loving moment.
When I got home, Jim was up. We decided to watch another movie - using Netflix instant streaming option this time. Jim has one computer hooked up to display thru our big screen TV and sound thru the stereo system. We chose 'Secretariat' - another wonderful, feel-good, inspiring movie.
Sometimes the nicest things happen when plans fall thru.

Further your computer education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Down the Rabbit Hole

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:23:00 +0000

October 5, 1839: Jasper H. Noyes was born. His father was Bethuel Noyes, one of the pioneer settlers of Michigan. Jasper had a son, Charles, and Charles married Mae Manning and had 3 sons Jasper M, Edward, and Francis. Edward Noyes was my grandfather.
Zella Carter was the daughter of Jim B. Carter and Bessie Snow. She was born October 11, 1905. Zella is my grandmother.
Ed and Zella had a baby girl on July 7, 1931 and they named her Marilyn. That's my Mom.

How do I know all this? Because I'm cleaning out my Mom's house (she's living in an assisted living facility now) and going thru all sorts of old files, folders, letters, and pictures. I have truly fallen down the rabbit hole, and I don't know when I'l be back.

I have never been interested in genealogy, and I hope I don't start now! But, I can see that it would be easy get hooked. My original plan was to toss everything - I surely have no *need* for my mother's wedding announcement. When I just couldn't bring myself to do that I thought, ok, I'll box the stuff up and put it in storage.
For who? When?

One of my finds at moms house. Her wedding announcement. This is from the Detroit yacht club magazine from march 1951

I decided that there's no time like the present so I'm staying at her old house and immersing myself. Sometimes I'm watching her videos of travel to Antarctica or China or Indonesia or Africa. Sometimes I'm reading thru old journals ... I found one that I thought was my Mom's writing, but it turned out to be my grandmother's and it was a 1976 trip journal from when she and my grandfather took a camper van and traveled these United States!! Talk about RVing being 'in my blood.!' She even writes that one of the highlights of her trip was Bellingrath Gardens in Alabama. If you've ever attended our Google Earth seminar, you may have heard our story about using Google Earth to decide whether or not to go to Bellingrath Gardens! As it turned out, we didn't go - now I have to go back!

I also found correspondence with my grandmother just before she died. She apparently was trying to locate my real father (Richard Andrews of Dearborn, Michigan) who I never met since they split when I was two. I am still determined not to play with genealogy! I'm already down the rabbit hole - I don't want to go thru the looking glass too!

I know genealogy is a good computer topic, but I have enough on my plate right now with Facebook, and then Picasa coming out with a new version, and both Picasa and Blogger becoming part of Google Plus. This experience has given me some fodder for more Picasa articles though ... like The Easy Way to Scan Slides

This morning Jim picked me up and then we also picked Mom up and went out to breakfast. I so wish I could show her these things and ask her questions. But she doesn't remember any of it ... and it would just confuse - and maybe upset - her to show her the pictures and documents. I did enjoy giving her a nice big hug though! I know she's had quite the amazing life and I'm enjoying learning even more.

Further your computer education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Lessons Learned

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Guld) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:24:00 +0000

When you live in a house on wheels, it is good to roll occasionally. More on that later.

Our generator stopped starting sometime late in our summer tour. It had been working fine. I knew that generators like to be used, so we exercised it regularly. One day, it just wouldn't stay running. I discussed the problem with fellow RVers and we all agreed it sounded like a fuel problem. There are lights on the generator that indicate source of the problem, once decoded. The lights said it was an electrical issue. Who you gonna believe? Knowledgeable RVers, or a stupid blinking light?

We were on our way to the FMCA rally in Madison. One of the great things about rallies is the opportunity to get service from the many vendors. Onan/Cummins was there with technicians and parts and everything. We were so busy presenting seminars, we did 11 different ones, I was too late to get any work done. So I got some literature and we went on to the Escapade in Wyoming with the intention to have the generator looked at during that part of the trip.

Procrastination is one of my better traits, when I finally get around to procrastinating.

Well, I finally had an RV mechanic look at the generator. He recommended I take it to Don Hillman for service, as he was reluctant to do the work himself. He also said to be prepared to spend big bucks.

I made an appointment for service.

The day for service came and we went through the list of things to do to roll the house, which has been sitting too long in one place and had lots of things in comfortable places. Comfortable places for things are often not good places for things when rolling down the road.

The rig wouldn't start.

I called Don Hillman and said I might be late for my service appointment.

I had apparently left something plugged in which drained the starting batteries. The emergency battery connect to the coach battery did not help. These big Diesels need a lot of amps to start. I called Good Sam Emergency Service. They sent a truck with enough juice to get me going.

I arrived at Hillman's only a half hour late. The tech they scheduled for me had been reassigned, but they got another tech right on it. Great. He spent some time figuring out what the problem wasn't, then determined the solution. Brushes. A small module in an inconvenient location needed replacement. Less than an hour later, we had our generator fixed!

Thank You Good Sam and Don Hillman.

Lessons learned:
Don't leave things plugged in to drain the battery.
Start your rig regularly when sitting for a while.
Have a good list for stow and go. Another list for sitting still.
Plastic bottles break less often than glass bottles.
Contents in overhead compartments shift. I knew that!
Pay for good Emergency Road Service. I knew that, too.

Be safe out there!

Merry Christmas and all the rest.

Further your computer education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Happy Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 22:10:00 +0000

We hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for I can’t even begin to list it all.

Just take a look at this beach which is only 15 minutes away.

The beach - just 15 minutes away

We had our Thanksgiving celebration at Birch State park, just across from the beach. Lots of family and friends and good food and a stunningly beautiful day. Thank you Jo Ellen for putting this together.

Our Thanksgiving picnic spot

Fried turkey for Thanksgiving

I gotta admit though, I find it a bit unsettling to be so settled! Our wheels haven’t turned in 6 weeks, and we don’t have any plans to move in the foreseeable future. I’ve been waiting for this time to get work done on our business website, and I have done a lot of good work, but it seems like every one thing that I scratch off my list produces at least 10 more to-do items on the bottom. I think that the RV traveling lifestyle puts time into perspective. Or maybe I just like to be on the move – period

My 40th High School reunion took place this month. It was great fun to see old friends. Surprisingly, I found out that I was one of the few who have attended every reunion we’ve had! That tells me something about myself – connections with people are very important to me. I never pass up an opportunity to keep those connections alive. I think that’s why I like Facebook so much. Now I have a few more High School friends that I know I’ll stay connected with because we are Facebook friends.

The day after Thanksgiving Jim and Dee Walters pulled into the RV site right next to ours. They are also fulltime RVers that we met a few years ago and we’ve had fun spending a little time and getting to know them better. Dee agrees with me that an RV is meant to be moved more often than every two months! Dee keeps a blog too – Tumbleweed-JimDee.blogspot.com but she does a much better job at writing regularly! She posted about our evening yesterday where we actually dusted off the Wii and had some fun.

Playing Wii bowling

Thanks Dee for motivating me!

Jim and Dee Walters - fellow fulltime RVers - tumbleweed-jimdee.blogspot.com

Exercise, Our Web Business, and Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 17:23:00 +0000

It’s been a quiet week here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – my home town.
The first part of the week we had to hunker down in the pouring rain. Any place we had planned to go had to wait till later as many areas were flooded. Here’s what the RV park looked like:

Excersise: The flooding made me miss my Monday morning visit to Curves, but I’m proud to say that I successfully completed visits on Tue/Thur/Sat then instead of my planned Mon/Wed/Fri. One thing that made me join is the fact that I’m not locked into any particular times for a class. It’s a half-hour ‘circuit’ of workout on resistance machines and aerobic moves. It’s SO easy and quick, there’s just no excuse! I haven’t lost any weight yet, but I already feel stronger and I get less out of breath already. Here’s hoping I keep it up. There are Curves all over the country – I’ve even noticed them in those little one-gas-station-towns everywhere. So, I should be able to work out even when we’re on the road.
Our Web Business: Sometimes it’s easy as a walk around the block, just put one word after another, and sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. This last Geeks on Tour Newsletter was the latter! I’m supposed to produce a main newsletter every month – but my prior one was August! I finally got the September/October newsletter published on Tuesday, November 1. Whew!
Membership Pricing: We announced new pricing in this newsletter. We’ve been charging a measly $39 for one year of access to all our tutorial videos. When we first started to charge in 2008, we probably had 70-80 videos – now it’s nearly 200 with plans for many more. We’ve been talking about raising our rates for quite some time, but kept putting it off primarily because of the logistics of making it work. Since we switched to using WordPress and the membership plugin Wishlist Member, those logistics have changed for the better so it’s time to Git-R-Done! We just passed our one year anniversary with WishList Member and the renewal process for our members is *not* going smoothly. This is one more weight in the balance for charging on an automatic renewal basis. Our new pricing will go into effect starting January 1, 2012:

$7/monthly (auto-renewing, aka recurring)
$58/annually (auto-renewing, aka recurring)
$68/one year (non-renewing/recurring)

Anyone who signs up or renews between now and the end of the year can lock in that measly $39 price by using our ‘Subscribe Now’ button that starts a new auto-recurring payment. As long as they don’t cancel it, that $39/year rate will last indefinitely.

We now have 135 members on that recurring plan and it’s remarkable the different attitude I have toward the business. It’s more solid, more real, I’m more motivated to produce. Instead of having members who are testing the waters … for $39, why not? We have members who have committed to paying us year after year. They’re telling us that they learn a lot from our work and they want to stick with us. That makes me want to give them more! One member recently wrote

Tonight I was playing with my blog, [and other software.] You already know that your 8 seminars at Perry in March have made this "computer stuff" one of my favorite pastimes. But it occurred to me tonight that you and your show-me videos have also given me confidence to navigate this maze of computerdom. Wanting to do something and finally figuring it out is just plain fun.
Thanks as always!-Bill

I wonder if Bill realizes just how good that makes us feel?
All totaled, we’ve had 1,973 people sign up for our membership at one time or another. If we can convert even half of those to a committed annual payment, that’s almost a real income! I love the membership website business model – and I believe we’ve just begun! If you hadn’t seen this before … check out the Forbes.com article, Running a Subscription Website from the Road, that was done about us and our web-business.
Culture – Miami Beach: Last night was ‘Sleepless Night’ in Miami Beach. We were invited to go by Chris and Richard. Chris is my best-girlfriend from way back and Richard is her husband whose job is assistant director (I think that’s the title) at the Planning Department of Miami Beach. So, even tho no one could ever label Jim and me as night-owl, paint-the-town-red kind of people, we couldn’t pass up this opportunity to get a little culture.
We started out with a delightful dinner at the sidewalk-café part of the Five Napkin Burger. It was a warm, beautiful, breezy night and we had a great time.

Richard had gotten tickets (all free, but you had to get them online in advance) for the New World Symphony. We had second row seats and the Ravel selections were just beautiful. Richard snapped this photo.

Then, we walked over toward the beach and saw this parade of giant sea creatures. The Miami Beach version of the Macy’s parade!

Our primary goal was to see Richard play with his band ‘Cone of Silence’ – but along the way we were treated to more classical music just out on the street. (click below and you’ll go to the video – click Back to return)

From 201111

We did finally make our way to the Vinyl and Kai night club and caught Richard’s performance. It’s so exciting to see a friend doing something that most people only dream of – way to go Richard! And, the band is really talented too! Good selection of Motown and Blues. But – I had forgotten how loud and crowded late night bar scenes can be. We had a great time, but we are not converted!
Here’s the best picture I could catch of Cone of Silence. That’s Richard on keyboards. Follow the link for some videos of their performances.

Time Compression

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:56:00 +0000

One thing I *really* like about the RV lifestyle is that, when you’re on the road, you definitely *get* that every day counts. If we’re visiting an area where we have friends, we make sure to visit those friends because we know that we’ll be on our way again in a few days. Every day counts.

When we stayed at Hart Ranch near Rapid City, SD this summer, I wanted to go for a hike in the Black Hills. We didn’t just talk about it, we did it. We had a memorable day hiking up to Harney Peak. We had to squeeze this in due to all the work we had to do on our website and rally preparations, but we did it because we only had a week there and every day counts.

Now we’re parked in our RV site where we intend to spend the whole winter. We’re at Paradise Island in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This is home for us, all our family and lots of friends are here. Since we plan to be here for nearly 6 months, the pressure of making every day count is gone. We’ve been here over two weeks now and still haven’t seen the beach! Time just slips away. I usually post to this blog at least twice a week, yet I see it’s been 2 weeks since I last posted!

A couple of days ago I went into the office of our Credit Union to make a deposit. I usually do this by mail, but I find it a treat to go into the branch office. Jessica has handled our accounts for years so I stuck my head in her office to say Hi! She asked how our summer was and it took me a while to give her just the abbreviated version. She said she couldn’t believe we had been gone 6 months – it seemed like just yesterday to her. It seemed like years to me.

It’s not that being in one place is bad … actually, I think we may have been a bit exhausted from our wonderful summer. It’s been nice to settle in and calm down. But, now I need to fight against getting too calm! Not only has it been two weeks since my last personal blog post – it’s been two months since I last published our Geeks on Tour Newsletter. Ok – gotta get to work!

Summer Tour is Over

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:10:00 +0000

We’re back in Fort Lauderdale. This is our fourth winter in a row that we’re staying at Paradise Island RV park and Jim is working in the office in exchange for our site rent.

We had a fabulous summer.

Now we’re back to being settled in. That’s kinda nice too. We have the best of both worlds with all the travel in the summer, and a home base in the winter. For example, I’m looking into going to a ‘Curves’ exercise place 2-3 times/week. We already have dinners with friends planned for several nights next week, and of course, we get to visit with family and take care of obligations.

Here’s our site at Paradise Island. And, oooohhhhhh do I love our new RV even more now. I always said that the smaller rig (30 ft class c , no slides) was a wonderful size as long as you were traveling. But, the longer you’re parked somewhere, the smaller it gets! Now with our two big slides and the great office furniture – I am very content. This is a comfortable house.

Crooked River State Park and Cumberland Island

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:45:00 +0000

I have a friend in St. Marys, Georgia that I've been wanting to visit for a while. Whenever we come back to Florida, I plan to stop in St. Mary's Georgia - but we never do ... till now. Barbara Ryan publishes the magazine, St Marys Magazine. We only had 2 nights here, so I was thrilled that Barbara was able to get together with us for Happy Hour on Friday night. She says that when she first visited St. Mary's about 8 years ago, it felt like she was getting a great big hug. She found herself buying a Bed and Breakfast and moving to St. Mary's in short order. And I can see why. It's just north of the Florida/Georgia state line on the coast. Cumberland Island is a barrier island that protects from major weather. It is a small town where she says she can just drive her golf cart any where she wants to go!

There's a great State Park just a few minutes away from historic St. Marys ... Crooked River. Here's our site:

On Saturday we took advantage of the ferry over to Cumberland Island National Seashore. That's got to be one of the most beautiful days we've spent in a long time. The weather was overcast, and we were worried about rainstorms, but it turned out to be perfect. If the sun had been shining, it would have been too hot. We took way too many pictures to lay them out individually here, so I put them in a slideshow instead.

Further your computer education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

The Carolinas

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:21:00 +0000

We've had perfect traveling days these past few days.

Up between 8 and 9,
time at the computer,
breakfast,
walk the dog,
on the road by noon
About 200 miles of travel - 4 hours
Beautiful campgrounds, nice walks, nice dinners, wine etc.

Thousand Trails park in Advance, North Carolina: Forest Lake:

Thousand Trails: Forest Lake

Mom and me walking the Trails

On the road again

Dinner at home.

Then on to South Carolina and a State Park called Colleton.

Now we're on to Crooked River State park in St. Mary's Georgia. We have reservations to take the ferry ride over to Cumberland Island tomorrow.

Further your computer education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Headed South

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:39:00 +0000

Our first stop after leaving the Gypsy Journal rally in Celina, Ohio was in Louisville, KY where we planned to pick up Mom from the airport. Our friend Dee flew with her, then went off to visit a cousin in Louisville. When we picked her up, Dee said that Mom had tripped and fallen on a curb when they arrived at Fort Lauderdale airport and Mom's rib was quite sore. We spotted a Health Clinic/Urgent care facility on our way back to the campground and took her in for some X-rays. Any time we've needed to use a walk-in clinic on our travels, I have been impressed and this time was no exception. They were efficient, friendly, and took the time to listen. The X-rays showed no fracture, so they prescribed Extra Strength Tylenol and rest and sent us on our way.

Whew!

So, all is well, but we arrived back at the campground after dark. I was so hoping that Mom would get to see the Llamas that she had met before at Grandma's Campground one other time when we flew her out of Louisville. I did get a picture of the Llamas earlier that day.

Sunday we took off - headed toward N Carolina to visit our old and dear friend, Emily.

Beautiful scenery driving thru the Appalachian mountains.

Emily was one of the very first people I got to know in Fort Lauderdale in the early 80s. She lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for 50 years, but when she met Donovan a couple years ago, she soon decided that living with him in his home in the N Carolina hills (mountains?) was the place for her. So, she packed up her cats and all her belongings, sold her house and here she is. It was so nice to see Mom get to visit her too. Emily and Mom have quite literally traveled around the world together. (Here's a short clip of their trip to Bhutan)
We were hoping to park our motorhome at Emily's and have a longer visit, but the last half mile of the road is not paved or graded. They take their truck up it all the time, but no way we could take Big Boy up that stretch. Even the paved road up to the bottom of their hill was a bit of an adventure in a large motorhome.

We did unhook the Honda and drove up to the house to visit a while.

Emily and Mom

Donovan in one of the comfy hanging chairs, surrounded by Emily's paintings.

Donovan is an artisan who makes custom moccasins for Catskill Mountain Moccasins. He sells them at Rennaissance Faires across the country.

Jim in another hanging chair and Emily looking just as content as her cats!

Plan B was to go to a local State Park, so we took the Honda over Hanging Rock State Park to check it out. Although beautiful, it was just a little too snug for comfort to take Big Boy there. Yep, that is a drawback to having a wonderful big rig. In our older, smaller motorhome, this park would have been great. Everything is a tradeoff.

So, after a short visit, we head out on the road again because we did have a Plan C - there's a Thousand Trails park just south of Winston Salem called Forest Lake. We knew we could get there before dark. All is well, it's a beautiful park *and* it has a hot tub.

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Gypsy Journal Rally

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:26:00 +0000

The Gypsy Journal Gathering is one of our favorite RV rallies. It's small enough that you can almost meet everyone, yet big enough that there's a lot going on. It also has an emphasis on education so you can choose from seminars on RV issues like water filters and tire maintenance or RV lifestyle topics like traveling to Alaska or staying at Harvest Hosts locations, and of course Geeks on Tour computer seminars. That's where we come in!

In addition to all the seminars there's a lot of fun too. We've been coming to this rally for several years now, so it feels like a family reunion with all the friends we get to see. We were especially happy to see John and Jean Watson - who we've known since our very first days of RVing and going to Datastorm Users rallies. Jean has agreed to help me with some maintenance work on our websites - stuff that has gotten out of date, and I just don't have time to go fix. It was really good to spend some time with her in person to work on the website since most communication will be online. Thanks Jean!

We presented 10 seminars in 3 days. Yes, we are exhausted - and we loved every minute of it.

Here's Jim teaching GPS navigation and Trip planning systems.

Here's Chris teaching how to make a Blog with Blogger.com

The most popular class was Facebook. It is such a great way for RVers to keep in touch with family, friends, and other RVers. We even taught one new class that we hope to repeat many times now ... it is on Smart Phones. We were pleasantly surprised to see the great majority of the attendees had Android-based phones since that is what we have to demonstrate although we had the iPad hooked up to the projector and were prepared to show some of that. We showed the anti-virus app we used and reviewed some basics like how to 'reboot', selecting Wi-Fi or 3G, understanding Airplane mode, camera settings like flash, auto-focus, and location storing (geotagging.) Then the fun stuff like dictating messages rather than typing, and voice search for navigation. I think we're going to find lots more to teach in this class! And, we may find that we can just call it Learning the Droid if future audiences are as skewed as this one was.

There was lots more going on during the rally, but we were pretty busy with our classes the whole time. For more details on the rally, see the Gypsy Journal Blog:

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Too Much Fun?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:51:00 +0000

Ever since we saw a portable Tiki bar outside an RV in a New York campground, Jim has wanted one. I saw it, thought it was really cute, and then forgot all about it, but he, apparently, has just been dreaming about this Tiki bar. So, while we had access to space, tools, and stores at the Jersey shore, Jim started putting this together ..

The Tiki Bar collapses into a package of the plastic shelving, and a roll of the bamboo and tiki torches.

We had a party the last night at the shore, and the Tiki Bar looked soo cute!

So, I told Jim: "Gee, sweetie, that's *really* cute, but what the heck are we going to use it for?"
"Well, it can be part of our booth or table at Rallies", he said.
"What in the world does a Tiki Bar have to do with computer training?", I replied.
Not much, but it's fun:

And you can never have too much fun!

We're in Celina, Ohio now at the Gypsy Journal RV rally. Friday and Saturday we gave our hands-on computer boot camp class. It went really well. We only had 5 registrations, 4 couples and one single, so we didn't make as much money as we'd like, but it was a joy to teach! We could go into depth, and really answer everybody's questions.

Although it is a serious class, we try to have fun at this too. For example, when people tell us that they get frustrated with their computers, we warn them to control their frustrations ... then show why with this video:

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A Week is Not Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:50:00 +0000

We had a great time at the Jersey shore. Everyone should be so lucky as we are to have a friend with a big driveway, right on the bay - and across the street from the ocean!

Sunset on the Bay

Playing in the waves on the ocean

Jim is from here, so there were lots of friends to visit.

Jennifer, Rich, Danny, Jim and Judy ... have known each other for over 40 years.

We only had one night left, so we had Jimmy take us for a boat ride, around the bay, to the lighthouse and inlet, then to dinner at a restaurant you can go to by boat.

Captain Jimmy of the Sea Lyon!

Thanks Jimmy! We had a great time. Next year, we need to plan a month!

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LBI

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Guld) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:16:00 +0000

Folks I meet often ask where I grew up. My standard answer is that I never did grow up. LBI is where I spent the years of my life they are referring to.

Long Beach Island is a special place.

My family moved to the Island in 1963 after my dad retired from the Navy. I moved away to Florida in 1985, but there is an allure here that regularly entices me to return. Chris has come to love it here, too.
September is my favorite time to visit. The weather is prime and the crowds are gone. There is one small RV park on the south end of the Island, but I have an old dive buddy friend with a roomy bayfront house and big driveway where we can park the rig.

The Island is a summer resort and escape from the Philadelphia and North Jersey urban areas. Tourism is the main industry. Construction here has been hit hard by the economy. Back when I lived here, the year round population of the Island was not more than 5,000 and the summer population was over 100,000.

My 40th High School reunion was this year. Southern Regional H.S. is on the adjacent mainland and served a huge area of southern Ocean County, including the Island.

I keep in touch with many of my old friends and family still in the area.

Facebook was instrumental in getting us together for this reunion. Alumni from all over the country collaborated and organized the event using Facebook and conference calls.

One of the things I get to do while visiting the Island is to go fishing. Several of my friends are avid fishermen. I am not.

I caught a "plank fish" which needs to be filleted with a power saw. The flounder was delicious, however.

Tonight we have invited many of our friends for a special feast. Blog post and pictures to follow.

Cross Country Travels

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:42:00 +0000

This isn't our preferred way to travel, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. Maybe because our new rig is a better ride, maybe because we had a couple special stops along the way, but Wyoming to the Jersey shore was accomplished in an easy 9 days. Taking pictures was not a priority since we were covering territory - traveling east - that we had just seen in traveling west. But I can't help but snap a couple here and there with my Droid phone since it's always with me. Because the Droid is also a GPS (and I have the setting turned on to add GPS coordinates to pictures), Picasa shows me a map of our last week shown as picture spots. The image below is a screen shot, but when you're using Picasa, you can click those little red baloons and see the pictures associated.

In addition to the special stop in Moline for the Picasa seminar, we also stopped in Elkhart, Indiana where our Gypsy Journal friends, Nick and Terry Russell were parked. We hadn't seen them since last December in Florida and we decided that a 'Nick Fix' would do us good. Besides, they just bought 2 new iMac computers and we had to see them! We will be at their Gypsy Journal rally at the end of this month, but we're all so busy then that there's not much time to chat. It was great seeing them, and their 2 new family members! Those computers sure are pretty with their large, beautiful screens. And, I really liked the touchpads instead of mice. It's more like using an iPad or Droid type of touch screen with the pinch moves.

If you don't know about Nick and Terry and their Gypsy Journal Newspaper, you owe it to yourself to go take a look. Nick is such an amazingly good writer that his daily blog attracts several thousand readers every day! They have been fulltimers for over 10 years and are instrumental in teaching a lot of folks about the best way to enjoy the RVing lifestyle. We originally met them when they were instructors for Life on Wheels. Now, we have presented our seminars at their rallies for several years, and are proud to call them friends. Their Gypsy Gathering Rally in Celina, Ohio September 25-30 will be our last rally of the season. We're offering our Computer Boot camp, plus 10(!) other seminars throughout the week. You can see the complete schedule by clicking on the link to their rally page. If you haven't signed up yet ... what are you waiting for?

Back on the road after Elkhart, our only destination was Long Beach Island, on the Jersey shore. But, as it turned out, we had one more stop to make. We filled up with Diesel fuel in Ohio just before the Pennsylvania state line because we didn't think we'd see the $3.69/gallon price again for a while. About 20 miles down the road the 'Check Engine' light came on - plus a couple other lights we didn't recognize.

What do those lights mean?

Jim took the next exit and turned into the first parking lot he could find while we searched for a Chevy dealer using our Droid smartphones. Luckily there was one not too far away. Their service department would be closed by the time we got there, but they said we could park in their lot overnight and they'd check things out in the morning.

They mean we get to spend the night at camp Chevy Dealer!

No other bad indicator lights were on - it wasn't overheating or anything - but the speedometer didn't leave the 0 mark as we drove and their was NO power. On several hills before the dealership, we were concerned that we would not make it to the top. But we did. The next morning, the service guy found the problem - 4 broken wires. So, the engine goes into what is called 'Limp Mode' whenever an error condition occurs. Learn something new all the time! They soldered the wires back together, we paid $200, and we were on our way.

After successfully negotiating the flooded landscape of eastern Pennsylvania, we finally made it to the shore. Here's our parking spot for the next week! And, we're off to Jim's high school reunion tonight.

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Quad Cities Computer User Group

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:03:00 +0000

Last night we presented a Picasa Seminar to the Quad Cities Computer Society in Moline, Illinois. It was the first time we've given our seminar to a non-RVing group. Vicki from the group contacted us several months ago. She said that several Internet searches for help with Picasa ended at our Geeks on Tour website. Since her group had several people needing help with Picasa, she wondered if we would be interested in doing a remote, Skype, webinar for her group.

Sure, but wait a minute, where did you say you were? We checked the map and noticed that Moline, Illinois was right on our route from Gillette, Wyoming to New Jersey ... how about we do a regular, live seminar? Her response .. Cool!
Here's Vicki with Judi, the President of the group.

They advertised the event in the local newspaper - billing us as 'Internationally known experts' :-) and had a great response.

We really enjoyed ourselves, and loved all the comments from computer group folks. We might be seeing more computer clubs in our future! Here's what Vicki, and another attendee posted on our Facebook page:

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Lots of Work, Lots of Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 20:39:00 +0000

I'm sure you've heard the saying that, "If you find a way to make your living with something you love to do - you'll never have to work a day in your life."

Or something like that :-)
We are living proof. We were as busy as we could be this past week - thus the lack of blog posts - but I also can't imagine having more fun. Here are a few pictures of the seminars we presented at the Escapade this week:

Our Picasa: Beyond the Basics seminar

Our Facebook Seminar

Our Streets and Trips seminar

All five seminars we taught this week had really good attendance, and I think they *all* came by our booth too. I'm surprised that I didn't lose my voice by the end of the week! We loved every minute!

We also had some time to get together with Phil and Tracey from TechnoRV and made further plans for our own rally. We have an RV park booked! It's in Bushnell, Florida and the dates are April 22-28. We've set up a public Facebook event that you can see for further details.

Don't we look like we're working?!

A couple of other items of note from the Escapade: Jim became a member of the Elks. There are Elks lodges all over the country that have overnight parking facilities for RVs. We look forward to taking advantage of them now. Meanwhile, Jim is a proud member of the Gillette, Wyoming Elks Lodge! We also met Don and Pat of HarvestHosts.com They find Wineries, Vineyards, and Farms willing to let RVs park overnight on their properties. Talk about right up our alley!

We left Gillette yesterday and are puting the miles on in order to get to the New Jersey shore (Long Beach Island) in time for Jim's 40th High School reunion on September 10. No time for sightseeing, but I did snap this shot of Devil's tower from the window!

Devil's Tower as seen from Highway 90 in Wyoming

We do have one stop in between. We agreed to present a special Picasa seminar at the Quad Cities Computer Society in Moline, Illinois. It's right on our route. See the news article about our appearance.

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August Review in Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:45:00 +0000

I love reviewing our pictures to see where we've been, what we've done for the month. I usually just visit my Picasa Web Albums. Today I decided to put the whole album into a blog post to review the month. Here ya go.

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Escapade

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:52:00 +0000

The Escapade is the rally for Escapees – an RV club that has been around quite a long time. This is the third one we’ve attended. It’s in Gillette, Wyoming at the Cam-Plex. This is a new, wonderful facility. So much better than when we have to give our seminars in the Cow Barn at a county fairgrounds!

We got here early to give our hands-on Computer Boot Camp class. We called it Camp Reboot to distinguish it from the RV Boot Camp that is always part of the pre-rally learning going on at the Escapade.

As Geeks on Tour, we like to concentrate on teaching things like managing your digital photos, making Blogs, and using Mapping software. We call it teaching travelers how to Plan, Preserve, and Share their travels. We actually shy away from teaching computer basics. Believe it or not, that’s a lot harder to do in a classroom situation. Every person is different in what they know or don’t know. But, every once in a while, we offer our ‘Computer Boot Camp’ class where we try to fill in the holes for people who learned computers on their own and don’t know the fundamentals. Here at the Escapade, we had a full 12 hours – spread over three days to teach the class. We had 14 computers, 20 people (couples shared a computer) and it went very well. I wrote more details about it in our business/Geek Blog, see Escapade Camp Reboot.

Here’s our site … pretty special in that we have full hookups (including sewer) *and* 50amp electric. That’s unheard of at a rally!

Ok, time to go and teach our ‘Every RVer Needs a Blog’ class.

Hart Ranch

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:43:00 +0000

We came here at the invitation of John and Kathy Huggins of LivingTheRVDream, and we had a great time getting to know them better. John and Kathy produce a weekly podcast about RVing. We first met them back in January at the RV Supershow and they interviewed us for their show.

Hart Ranch, Rapid City South Dakota

We spent a week at Hart Ranch and had a great time. We presented a couple of seminars while we were there, and several people showed up to participate.

A pretty good crowd for our Picasa seminar at Hart Ranch

We took advantage of the pool and hot tub a couple of times and ate at the on-site restaurant a few times as well. One night we met up with friends Orv and Nancy Hazelton who we haven’t seen since the last Gypsy Journal Rally. We also enjoyed happy hours several evenings. You’d think that, in this traveling lifestyle, you’d always be far away from anyone you know. But, if you do it long enough, you find a traveling community that is so large, there’s always someone you know nearby!
We had a couple of dinners with John and Kathy. We had fun showing them how to make a blog on their iPad using Blogger. First we had them use one of our computers projected onto our big screen in the living room, so we could all see the same thing and teach them how. It was cool to have a classroom right in our motorhome! Then we had Kathy use her iPad and see how blogging can be done on that.

Next, they showed us some of their cool equipment for recording their podcasts, and they interviewed us again for their next episode. I’ll post a link here when it’s ready. Their Four-Microphones-in-one device, called a Zoom, worked so well that Jim ordered one for us. There may be podcasts in the Geek’s future!
Other than our hike on Saturday, it was looking like we’d be leaving Rapid City without seeing anything about Rapid City. But, on the last day, I scheduled Odie to get groomed at Petco downtown. Jim came too and we hung out downtown for the 3-4 hours that Odie was at the groomers. I really wanted to see some of the presidential statues that Rapid City is known for …

President Truman statue in Rapid City

President Taft

President Monroe

John F Kennedy, and John Jr.

Andrew Jackson - 7th President

But here’s where we were truly heading …

Firehouse Brewing Co in Rapid City

That’s a nice town … Rapid City. In the summertime anyway! When we got back to the rig, Jim decided to wash it. Hart Ranch is one of those rare RV parks that allow you to do washing at your site. I helped … I took his picture. I so enjoy watching him work!

Hart Ranch allowed washing! The only RV park all summer that did!

So, here’s our nice shiny rig ready to hit the road for Gillette, Wyoming and the Escapade.

Our clean shiny 'Big Boy' ready to hit the road again.

We’ll be teaching our ‘Camp Reboot’ Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; then the rally starts on Monday. We hope to see a lot of you there. If you’ll be there, stop by our booth – yes, we actually have a booth at this one – I don’t know what number yet, but we’ll be there.

Computer Boot Camp at the Gypsy Journal Rally in Ohio, end of September

If you wanted to take our ‘Camp Reboot’ and you couldn’t make this one, it’s on our schedule one more time this summer – at the Gypsy Journal Rally in Celina, Ohio on September 23. For more details see our Computer Boot Camp page. It is really a very useful class for people who didn’t have computers in school. We know that most people are using computers now; they know how to turn it on, they know how to connect to the Internet and send emails. The boot camp is not for complete beginners. But it’s not for advanced users either. It’s for that majority of adult users who are somewhere in between. Our aim is to fill in those gaps in your knowledge. What are those keys on your keyboard that you never use? Why does the screen go blank in Windows 7 and then suddenly reappear? How do I backup my files to an external hard drive? What do I need to install to keep my computer secure? Those questions and many more are answered in our class. Check it out on our Computer Boot Camp page.

South Dakota Black Hills

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 04:32:00 +0000

.On our way from the FMCA convention in Madison, Wisconsin to the Escapade in Gillette, Wyoming we're passing thru the Black Hills in the southwest corner. We were here in our first year of RVing - 2004. We were looking forward to seeing Mt. Rushmore again, and we made sure to stop at the famous Wall Drug this time around.

We're staying at Hart Ranch RV resort at the invitation of John and Kathy Huggins from LivingTheRVDream.com We're also giving a couple of our seminars while we're here. We have plenty of work to do in order to be ready for the Escapade, and we have lots of catch up work to do on our website and email. But, I was determined we were going to take a hike one day. We picked Saturday, and it was a great choice. Beautiful day, beautiful hike. We drove past Mt. Rushmore into Custer State park and hiked the Harney Peak trail. We did almost 8 miles with 2,500 feet elevation gain. I was dragging by the time we were done, but my arm probably hurt the most from patting myself on the back!

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Living on the Road, Working on the Web

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:27:00 +0000

Yesterday was a fantasy.
But wait …
It was real!
Ashleigh Brilliant is a favorite wordsmith of mine and I’ve adopted one of his sayings as my mission statement:

“I’ve abandoned my search for the truth and am now seeking a good fantasy”

First of all, we have a wonderful home to live in. Every morning we wake up in our oh-so-comfortable bed, we have to look around at our luxurious surroundings and pinch ourselves.

What a nice bedroom?!

But, better yet, this home has wheels. Here’s where we are traveling right now:

Traveling on I-90 thru Minnesota and South Dakota

It’s hard to say what is the best part of this lifestyle, but for us anyway, just being on the open road is a big part of it. The powerful engine sound and the hum of the wheels on the pavement. Jim likes to drive – especially our new diesel – and I’m happy to let him because I love to just sit and watch the scenery go by while I daydream. It’s my time off.

We can see for miles and miles ... heading west on 90 to Minnesota

Crossing the Mississippi

Time off from what you ask? Well, that’s the other *best* part about our lifestyle - our work is on the web. We officially started our www.geeksontour.com business in 2006 and people have been opting in to our email lists ever since. Yesterday, before getting on the road, I sent out an email to our current list of about 7,000. I told them about a review that was recently written about our Picasa book – it was very complimentary. I wrote that the ebook is currently available for only $10 – including access to 25 tutorial videos. That’s way too cheap, and someday soon we will raise the price, but it seemed a good marketing thing to do to make one last push at the cheap price.

After sending the email, I turned off the computers and stowed all loose objects in the RV. We pulled In the slides, raised the stabilizing jacks, and drove away. By the end of the day when we pulled into the next RV park for the night, we checked our PayPal account and we had made enough money to cover our fuel costs from Madison to Gillette. Life is SO good!

What was more surprising was the number of people who ordered the printed book at $29. So Jim had to work all evening, printing, binding and packaging a dozen books. Today we need to find a post office because some of the books need to be shipped overseas – we had orders from New Zealand, Australia, England, and Canada. It is just so amazing that we’re operating an International business from our motorhome while traveling the country. If you want to read a little more about our business, here’s an article from last year that was written in Forbes.com.

In addition to driving down the highway, and making money, we also did a little sightseeing yesterday. I can never resist taking pictures of windmill farms. They are such huge, yet elegant structures.

MInnesota cornfield and windfarm

We had heard about the Corn Palace for years, but had no burning desire to see it. As the signs started pointing to the next exit, I said, ‘What the hell, let’s stop.’

It's fun to be a tourist

The murals really are made of corn cobs.

We were told that there are hundreds of acres of corn planted *just* for making these murals. The different colors are specifically grown right in the area.

And, in the parking lot for the Corn Palace, we saw a motorhome with an FMCA logo in the window. As we walked past toward our rig, we wondered if maybe we knew these people. Within a couple minutes, we heard our names shouted behind us – it was Linda Ballard and her husband. Linda attended many of our seminars at the Madison rally and joined our membership site. Her husband, Wayne?, said he’s been on our email list for quite some time. We’re both headed toward the Black Hills around Rapid City, SD. We may just run into them again! Part of our family on the road.

Back on the road, when we came upon the Missouri river it felt like a good time to stop … it was about 4:30.

Coming up on the Missouri River

Besides, we’d been bombarded with signs for ‘Al’s Oasis.’ It is THE place to stop.

Al's Oasis

We stopped, connected to the park’s pretty good WiFi, and started answering emails and printing mailing labels!

There you have it! A perfect day for us. Living on the Road and Working on the Web. Our Truth *is* our Fantasy.

Geeks on Tour Blog

Look Up

Is it an RV Show or a Rally?

Are you a Member of our GeeksonTour.TV website?

What is a Membership Website?

Merry Christmas

Down the Rabbit Hole

Lessons Learned

Happy Thanksgiving

Exercise, Our Web Business, and Culture

Time Compression

Summer Tour is Over

Crooked River State Park and Cumberland Island

The Carolinas

Headed South

Gypsy Journal Rally

Day Two, Ohio Rally

Further your computer education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Too Much Fun?

A Week is Not Enough

LBI

Cross Country Travels

Quad Cities Computer User Group

Lots of Work, Lots of Fun

August Review in Pictures

Escapade

Hart Ranch

Computer Boot Camp at the Gypsy Journal Rally in Ohio, end of September

South Dakota Black Hills

Living on the Road, Working on the Web

Further your computer educationSubscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter