Geeks on Tour Blog

Colorado Springs and RVSEF Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:49:00 +0000

We made it! 2,206 miles in 9 days. That is not our norm. We prefer to take about a month for that distance. But everything fell into place, and as you've seen we made sure to have some fun along the way as well. I added up our expenses ... spending roughly $2,000 all totaled. $1,200 in diesel fuel, $200 in campground fees, and $600 in RV service and entertainment.
Our goal was this RVSEF Lifestyle, Education, and Safety conference. It's the same conference that we've done a couple times before in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We're teaching a few classes, but it's a very small conference so there's no stress at all. And, take a look at where we are!

That's Pikes Peak in the background (I think)

And, here's our parking spot.

We're just in the parking lot of the conference facility, so there are no hookups. We're giving our generator a workout, and learning that our inverter works pretty well. We're here for 5 nights. I'm not sure we've ever dry-camped that long before, and certainly not for a looong time. It's good practice!

This is the conference group, just getting to know each other. Some have been RVing for a while, some haven't even bought their RV yet. They come here to learn what they need to know - driving classes, electrical system classes, water system classes, lifestyle classes, and technology classes-that's us!

There are some real industry experts here, and Jim enjoyed taking a couple of electrical classes with Gary Bunzer, the RV Doctor. Linda and Howard Payne of RV-Dreams are also here. We follow their adventures and have been especially envious of their recent exploration of Utah's parks.

And no RV safety conference is complete without Mac the Fire Guy!

We're here for a couple more days, then on to Denver and a visit with Diane and Andy .. and Elizabeth!

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Capulin Volcano National Monument, New Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:34:00 +0000

This was pure serendipity. We're on our way to Colorado Springs, Colorado. On our route thru northeast New Mexico, we used our Passport America app on our smartphone to find a place to park the RV for the night. We found Capulin RV Park, and it was delightful. We got hooked up to their 50 amp electric service, put our slides out, and settled in. We had seen a sign for Capulin Volcano National Monument and had no idea what it was, but the owners at the park said it was very worthwhile, so we determined to make the short, 3 mile trip to the park in the morning.

We stopped at the visitor's center and watched the short video - we love to get the overview that way. We also bought a new annual National Parks pass for $80. We plan to see a lot of National Parks this summer, and wanted to be ready! We also splurged and bought the $8 passport, a little book that lists all the national park properties and gives you a place to stamp a page for every property you visit.

Then we drove up to the top of the Volcano and took the mile loop walk around the rim. At over 6,000 feet and uphill, we were really huffing and puffing, but OH THE VIEWS!

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Sunrise in Texas, Sunset in New Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:48:00 +0000

There’s nothing better than travel for taking lots of pictures. I’ve had so much fun these last few days! I store my pictures by the month, and already so far in May I have 286 pictures. I only upload my best ones to my Picasa Web Albums and there are 75 photos there.
WE spent our last night in Texas in Vernon at an RV park called Rock’n A! Their brand looks like the letter A with a base like a rocking chair. Fun.
So, here was the view from our bedroom window the next morning:

Sunrise in Texas

I took several shots. Here’s a collage where I put together two in a panorama. Click on it to see a larger size.

Then we got on the road. We would be going thru Amarillo that day and I couldn’t get the song, “Amarillo by Morning” out of my head. I really wanted to hear it! So, using my smartphone, I googled for Amarillo by Morning and discovered that it’s by George Strait. So then I launched Pandora internet radio and asked for a George Strait station. Lastly I activated the Bluetooth connection to the dashboard radio (a new radio that Jim recently installed) and, within minutes I was singing along to Amarillo by Morning!
After we got tired of country music, I switched my smartphone over to the Kindle book reader and read aloud for both Jim and me to enjoy. We’re reading the latest book in the Big Lake series written by our friend, Nick Russell. Big Lake Blizzard is his fourth who-dunnit in the series and we’re really getting to know all the characters. It’s such a fun and easy read – . See all the books by Nick on Amazon.
We stopped to refuel in Amarillo, then zoomed right thru on I-40 barely catching a glimpse of the Cadillac Ranch along side the highway. Then we headed north on a smaller, scenic highway.

Texas road north of Amarillo

Old windmill

New Mexico

We crossed over into New Mexico and finally stopped after Jim drove a total of 356 miles. We found a Passport America park called Capulin RV after the name of the town, and Capulin Volcano National Monument. We took a walk at sunset time, then went home and cooked up one of my favorites … Cioppino. Handled a little bit of email then went to bed.
It doesn’t get any better than this!

going for a walk at sunset

New Mexico Sunset

Friends in Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Mon, 13 May 2013 03:46:00 +0000

After visiting Escapees in Livingston, we wanted to visit our friend Frank Drew who lives in Waco and the new Presidential Library in Dallas. We looked at the map and saw a Thousand Trails park that looked like it was pretty close to Waco and just a little further to Dallas. Turned out to be double the distance it appeared (everything’s bigger in Texas!), but it still worked out great. We always enjoy staying at a Thousand Trails park, and this one didn’t disappoint. It’s a huge park and you’re really camping in the woods – yet they have a great hot tub and we took advantage.

The hot tub at Lake Whitney Thousand Trails park

Visiting Frank, was an unqualified joy! He happened to be flying in to Dallas from a convention in Las Vegas, so we arranged to pick him up at Love Field, after our visit to the Presidential museum. We drove him to his home in Waco. That gave us some real quality time to catch up on the 4 years since we’ve seen him. We spent a lot of time with Frank in our first few years on the road. He owned Coach Connect, a company that installed Wi-Fi in RV parks. Jim worked as customer support for the company. The company went under, but the friendship remained. He’s one of those friends where you pick up right where you left off even though it’s been years since you’ve talked! We were especially happy to be able to visit now because he and his delightful wife, Beth, just had a baby girl.

Hello Claire!

Proud Daddy, happy baby

Frank and Beth are brave souls to trust their baby to be held by these two!

I don't know who is more afraid?

Do you blame her?

We were also thrilled that we got to visit with Frank Sr. at his new home in Waco. Sorry we missed Frank’s mom, Carol – she’s visiting family in Idaho. Next time Carol!

Presidents in Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:09:00 +0000

We are huge fans of Presidential museums. We have made it a point to stop at them all over the country, and have managed to visit all 12 official Presidential museums. See this past post for a list. There are also a few presidential historic sites we’ve visited that are not part of the official system of Libraries … Teddy Roosevelt Nat’l Park in N Dakota, Lincoln museum in Illinois, Whitehouse museum in Washington, D.C. Whenever I write a blog post about any of these, I add a label for Presidential Libraries. Clicking on that link will show all of those posts together.

The 13th official Presidential Museum

So, when we learned that the 13th official library had just opened, and it was on our route, we had to visit the George W Bush Presidential Museum in Dallas. This is our third Presidential museum in Texas – Lyndon Johnson in Austin, George H.W. Bush in college station and now George W in Dallas!

George W Bush Presidential Library and Museum

It was very strange to see ‘History’ displayed on events we have lived through – recently – and have our own recollections and opinions.

A centerpiece of the Bush library was this twisted steel remnant of the World Trade Center from 9-11

I usually really like seeing history summarized. My brain is too full as it is and can’t hold much more, so just give me the soundbites! But, when you see the decision to invade Iraq simplified to 3 choices (1.another UN resolution, 2.Lead an invasion 3.Do nothing) you know that history isn’t that simple, there was so much more going on. More than anything, this experience makes me question everything I’ve learned about history – the facts are always as seen thru the eyes of the presenter, and the presenter with the biggest stage wins.

This Iraq scenario was one of the presentations in the ‘Decision Points Theatre.’ I loved the technology in the presentation, there were at least a dozen stations where the audience gets to vote on the decision, and the results are displayed on the big screen. Then President Bush appears on the screen and explains his decision.

George W Bush tells the audience about the decision he made

In addition to a Presidential record, we have come to expect these libraries to present a slice of life in America during that president’s term. Although it was appropriate that the terror attacks of 9/11 were portrayed as the dominant events of his term, I was disappointed that I didn’t see any presentations of the technology that emerged during this time. Yes, we’re geeks, but I think everyone can agree that GPS, smartphones, and growing access to Internet has changed our world during these years as much or more than those terror attacks, and I think they deserve a place in the museum.

It was odd to come away from a Presidential Library visit with more negative feelings than positive. Although it’s true that we were not fans of George W Bush, we are ardent fans of Presidential museums, it is one of our very favorite things to do on the road. This one just felt more like a commercial for the man than a museum of his life and times. Maybe the other ones were too and I just didn’t notice?

Lots of people had their picture taken with Bush and Bush Sr.

Escapees CARE

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:07:00 +0000

We are Escapees. No, that doesn’t mean we’ve run away from the asylum! It means we belong to the RV Club called Escapees. Although membership is open to anyone who is interested, a large number of members are like us – those who have adopted the fulltime RV Lifestyle.

Think about this: if your fulltime home is your RV, what do you do when the time comes that you can’t manage the mobile lifestyle? Either for temporary reasons, like some broken bones, or permanent reasons like the debilitating diseases of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's?

The Escapees club has thought about that and they established the CARE center over 20 years ago! Continued Assistance for Retired Escapees.

The CARE facility is located at the Escapees national headquarters property in Livingston Texas. Since our route took us right by there, we decided to stay a night at the Escapee’s Rainbow’s End RV park. As Geeks on Tour was recently endorsed by Escapees, we were especially interested in stopping by and shaking hands!

Escapees Headquarters, Livingston Texas

We also hoped to get a glimpse of the CARE facility we had heard so much about. Our timing was good. Both Tom Courville and Russ Johnson, who manage and promote the facility were on site and gave us a nice tour.

Notice the RVs in the background of this next picture … that’s where the residents live, in their own RVs. Then they can just walk across the street for 3 meals a day, nursing care, assisted showers, and activities. The only requirement is that you be able to transfer your own weight – and you be an Escapee!

Tom explains how the CARE center works. Residents live in their RVs

This next picture shows Russ inside the CARE facility. A very comfortable lounge area with TVs, computers, books etc. And even a small stage area where they have frequent musical performances. We were especially interested to hear Russ speak of his plans to promote the facility and possibly open more of them around the country. He told us that he is using Photo Story 3 – which he is learning from Geeks on Tour videos! – to put together short promotional movies.

Russ is working hard to promote the CARE facility, and maybe open more of them around the country

Probably most of the residents here are couples where one needs fulltime care and the other is a caregiver. With this arrangement, the one needing care can spend the day in the center while the caregiver gets a break. CARE is a licensed Adult Day Care facility.

Besides being unique in allowing you to live in your RV, it’s also unique in the price. We know how much it costs for assisted living, since we’ve dealt with that for both of our parents, at $849/mo for one person and $424 for an additional person, CARE is a fraction of the norm!

How do they do it?! First of all, they are a 501C3 charitable organization and accept many types of donations. Here is their new transportation bus that they purchased with funds raised completely by donations:

Their new transportation bus, purchased with Donations to CARE

Secondly, they operate with the help of many, many volunteers. We’ve met lots of folks over the years that tell us of their rewarding stay in Livingston while volunteering at the CARE center. Volunteers are provided an RV site during their stay.

If you’re interested in more information for the possibility of being a future resident, volunteer or donor – you’ll find everything you want to know on their website at http://www.escapeescare.org

Bellingrath Gardens

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:56:00 +0000

We’ve driven by here several times and never visited the gardens. For quite a few Google Earth Seminars we used this location as an example by using Google Earth to view photos of the gardens, and street view of the parking area to see if we could park the RV there. We had a lot of fun showing how to visit the place with Google Earth, so we felt like we had been there and didn’t need to really go in person and pay the entrance fee! I swear, every time we did this seminar several people in the audience chastised us – they said they visited Bellingrath Gardens and loved it … we had to go! Another incident along our cosmic path this year is that I found an old letter from my Grandmother to my Mother … she was writing about the cross-country trip she and my grandfather made in a VW Bus in 1978. This letter told of the wonderful time they had at ….

you guessed it! Bellingrath Gardens!

So, this time across I-10 we HAD to stop! Bellingrath Gardens is just a little ways off of I-10 on the west side of Mobile.

Apparently we missed the spectacular display of Azaleas that peaks sometime in March, but the roses were out in full force!

Roses at Bellingrath Gardens

The flowers at Bellingrath Gardens.

The trees rivaled the flowers for most stunning

Smile!

Jim gets a unique perspective on the gardens

Bellingrath Gardens

We took advantage of their boat tour of the estuary.

Bellingrath Gardens boat tour of the estuary

Bellingrath Gardens - boat tour of the estuary

Bellingrath Gardens

We had a delicious lunch at the cafe , decided we would live without any purchases from the gift shop, and got back on the road.

The first time we’ve crossed over west of the Mississippi in quite a while. This is the crossing at Baton Rouge, Louisianna.

Baton Rouge - crossing the Mississippi

The Atchafalaya stretch of I-10 is definitely one of the most interesting highways in the country. It’s two bridges, one in each direction, that carry you over beautiful swamp, or is this called Bayou?

Atchafalaya

Crossing the Atchafalaya river

Floods? Or normal high water?

Atchafalaya

After about 250 miles, it’s time to stop. We found a Passport America park called Frog City – how can we resist? Nice gravel pull-thru sites. Good Wi-Fi and cable. Next to a casino where we’ll go to breakfast, and right off the highway … Passport rate = $20. Cookies included!

Today the plan is to get into Texas and stay at the Escapees home park at Livingston.

Laissez le Bons Temps Roulez!

Florida Caverns State Park

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:23:00 +0000

We also recorded an episode of our audio “Gabbing with the Geeks.” To listen to it, go to Gabbing with the Geeks from Florida Caverns State Park and click the play icon on the audio file.

When we looked at our Streets and Trips map with State Parks pushpin set showing, Florida Caverns popped out at us as a likely place to stay our second night. We’d heard about this place long ago from our friends Diane and Andy and we’re delighted to get to visit at last.

The stretch of I-10 which goes by Talahassee is always pretty because of the lush, thick forest all around. But in springtime it’s even more beautiful because of the flowers.

We pulled into the park about 3pm and told the lady at the gate that we planned to take the cave tour the next day. She said, well y’know you could easily make the 4:30 tour today. We do have 200 schoolchildren scheduled on the tours tomorrow. Hey! 4:30 sounds good!

Even though we only had 10 people on our tour, there was a family of 5 that included twin 2-year olds that didn’t stop running and talking. We may have been better off with the school group! Anyway – it was still an amazing sight.

We’ve been to Carlsbad, Mammoth, and Luray caverns. Although this one is on the small side, it rivaled them all for the beautiful formations.

Here’s our site in the beautiful forest with singing birds.

Happiness is being able to open the window shade on the rear bedroom window!

After a quiet night, we took advantage of the nature trail in the morning.

Next, we’ll be off to another ‘Must See’ that we’ve passed by many times … Belingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama.

May the Fourth be with You

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 05 May 2013 00:17:00 +0000

“Star Wars Day” seemed an auspicious start to our summer travels! Clouds in the sky and bugs on the windshield. We're on the road!
Lots of changes this time. Mostly good. We have new tires on the RV and we're towing a new car.
We made a decision to leave our kayaks in Fort Lauderdale. We didn't have a chance till try the roof rack, and we never use them that much anyway. Lastly, we may fly home sometime during the summer and then the kayaks would be there for scuba diving.

First night on the road at 3 Flags in Wildwood, fl. Tomorrow night is Florida caverns state park.
On our way to Colorado springs for the rvsef conference. See RvSafety.com

Sad Stuff: It was a pretty quiet drive because, if I tried to talk, all I could do was sob. It feels so sad to not have Odie with us. After all, we were Odie’s Roadies … now we’re just roadies. It was also very hard for me to leave Mom. She so enjoys having me visit. At her level of Alzheimers she doesn’t really know where I am, but she still recognizes me and is happy in the moment when I’m with her. I didn’t say I’m going away for the summer – I just said, “See you later.”

Gotta love Florida

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 05 May 2013 00:17:00 +0000

Do you know how delightful it has been in South Florida these last two weeks?

We've been hearing from facebook friends all over the country of temperatures in the 100's. And other days we've read of friends experiencing snow where they are.

The UN-Bloggable Life

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:51:00 +0000

For the last few weeks we’ve been doing those mundane things that need to get done and are not very exciting. We usually try to do something Blog-worthy at least once a week, but even that hasn’t happened this time.

We’re ready to hit the road tomorrow, so here’s a recap of the past couple weeks. On the way home, we had a flat tire on the RV and decided we needed 6 new tires – that was Jim’s job. See our Geeks on Tour Newsletter for a little more detail on that!

Mom had several dentist/doctor appointments – that kept me busy several days. Then Jim and I had our own dentist/doctor appointments to attend to.

We got a new car and gave the old one to Devon. I think this is going to work out well. We got another Honda CRV, since the old one worked so well. We bought a 2007 from CarMax – same place we bought the last one.

New car color matches the RV much better!

We really enjoy attending our Toastmasters group when we’re in town.

Jim and Chris at Earlybird Toastmasters in Fort Lauderdale

I took my camera to one meeting and ended up making this little movie using Picasa and Movie Maker:

I was hoping to get a lot of progress on updating our PicasaTutorials.com website since I had hired a web development firm the month before to take it over, put it on their servers and update it to a new design with all sorts of bells and whistles.

Then I was going to start ringing those bells and blowing the whistles. Instead I had to spend most of my time putting out fires because, in the process of transferring and updating, it was left vulnerable to hackers. Instead of our readers being impressed with an updated system (for which I spent a lot of money) they were greeted with a Google warning that the site was filled with Malware. What a nightmare! To their credit, the developers and webhosts did do all the work to clean it up, but I spent all my time doing damage control and keeping tabs on it. It is now all clean (I hope) and it’s working faster than ever. But, I don’t have much heart anymore for ringing those bells and blowing the whistles!

I spent as much time with Mom as possible. Here’s a sweet picture of her getting her hair cut.

mom-haircut

Oh yeah, we spent some time with the grandkids too. Here we were babysitting them at the pool.

Grandkids at the swimming pool

IMG_5509.JPG

And, here they are in the motorhome with their favorite babysitters … our tablet computers! We don’t have to show them a thing … they really do know how to use them just intuitively. In fact, I keep a close watch so I can learn something!

At home with the babysitters!

We were supposed to get on the road a few days ago, but we had to wait for an awning part to arrive. The arm that holds the awning out just snapped and broke in a little bit of weather the other day. That part arrived today and Jim took care of putting it all back together again. He also worked with a repairman to fix our rear air conditioner unit while I did some laundry.

We’re both looking forward to hitting the road so we can relax a bit!

We’re headed to Colorado Springs, for the RVSEF conference. After that, it will be Rapid City, SD and then Gillette, WY for lots more rallies. See our calendar for all the details.

Roadtrek Technology and Camping Rally

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:05:00 +0000

When we were asked to present one of our seminars to the Roadtrek Technology and Camping Rally, we accepted just because it was on our route and scheduled at the end of the season after all our other obligations were over. We knew it would be a small rally and didn’t expect it to be very memorable. Little did we know that we were saving the best for last! Outside of our own TechnoGeek Learning Rally, this group was the most eager for Geeks on Tour information!

Small but mighty Roadtreks

Roadtrek Rally

We were originally scheduled for 3 hours on the first morning of the rally, but they ended up giving us the floor both morning and afternoon of the second day as well. We welcomed 10 new members to Geeks on Tour. Out of a group of 24 rigs – I think that’s our highest percentage yet!

We handed out free trial copies of Streets & Trips and showed them how to use it along with the POI megafile. We demonstrated Dropbox as an example of Cloud Computing. We also demonstrated Google Drive where we could both edit one online document simultaneously. We showed them smartphone and tablet apps like the free Google Translate, and how to scan Barcodes. We just kept on showing them all our favorite stuff like face recognition in Picasa, making a blog with Blogger, and they ate it up. Several of them wanted details when Jim showed off his new Microsoft Surface Pro. The main selling point is that this is a tablet that is also a full-blown Windows computer so it can run programs like Quickbooks, Picasa, Streets & Trips etc.. It is Jim’s main computer now. It’s a tiny tablet to grab and go, but when at his desk he uses an external monitor, keyboard and mouse for a full desktop experience. If you’re interested in buying one, there’s an Amazon ad at the bottom of this post. If you click that and buy – we’ll get a few dollars.

Jim's Surface Pro (the little screen in the middle) with external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

By the second afternoon, we didn’t even present any particular topic – we just opened it up for any and all questions. Stump the Geeks! They got us once, but Google came to our rescue and we gave them their answer after all!

The Roadtrek group playing Stump the Geeks!

Presenting our Smartphone Overview class to the Roadtrek Rally

They didn't let us go before we agreed to return for their Chapter rally in February 2014! It’s on our calendar now. It will be held at this same park – Tropical Palms in Orlando.

We really enjoyed these Roadtrekers!

We had a great time … Thanks to Dave Gottdiner for inviting us!

A Setting for Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:39:00 +0000

My day to day reality is pretty cool. But it's still my day to day reality and I look for opportunities to spend time doing something even cooler.

How about this? We parked the RV at Alex's house in Melrose Florida. Alex is an old high school friend that we have gotten reacquainted with in recent years precisely because she has space - and hookups - for us to park our RV! It's a beautiful place don't you think?

We're here this time because of a writer's workshop that I'm taking. Let me give you a little background. There was a guy in my high school class (along with Alex) named Cary Tennis. He went on to become a writer and has earned an enviable amount of fame as the advice columnist for Salon.com. A quiet, quirky kid in high school, I am in awe of his words and wisdom in this column. I noticed that he offers writing workshops near his home in San Francisco and dreamed of being able to attend one someday. When I saw that he was going to be offering one of his workshops in Alex's town of Melrose, Florida ... and that we would still be in Florida at the time. It took me 2 seconds to decide to attend.

I didn't even know about the best part ... the setting. Alex found a house right on lake Santa Fe that was available to rent. Most of the participants would be flying in and staying there. I, of course, stayed in the RV in Alex's yard, but the workshop was held at the house, so I enjoyed it all day long. What do you think?

The room where we wrote, talked, laughed and cried.

The morning view from the end of the dock

The sunset view from the end of the dock

Places for quiet contemplation

Time for private conversations

Cary Tennis - still the quiet, quirky kid I knew in High School

Our group.

The one who wasn't there for the group shot.

Inspiration

Cary leads these workshops according to the principles of the Amherst Writers and Artists method. He doesn't teach so much as facilitate. His personality is superbly adapted to making a group feel comfortable, safe, and free to explore their own voices. And that's exactly what we did. He would throw out 'prompts' to get us started writing. One prompt was to pretend we were looking at photographs and start writing with the words, "In this one you ...." Another was to write a thank you note to an every day object like your brush, or a door or ...
These got us going, and then we read aloud. We all marveled at each others' creations. We laughed, we cried, and we sat in silence. It was quite an experience. I am hoping I can hold on to that feeling of freedom to write ... about anything. This blog is a great place to experiment. Watch out!

After the workshop was over, we were invited to a local poetry reading group at the historic Bellamy Road. I even got up and read one piece that I had written over the weekend. It was in response to Cary's prompt to tell a story using only nouns! I think I liked this prompt best because it was OK if I didn't know how to put a proper sentence together! The assignment was to not use sentences!

More photos here.

TechnoGeek Learning Rally

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Guld) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:02:00 +0000

This is the third day.
Whew!
We're creating this blog post as part of our blogger class. We're using Live Writer and showing how to insert a map, using Live Writer's tools.

Lots of fun with Line Dancing. These videos comes from a Rally attendee's cell phone and she uploaded it to youtube.

Smartphone Class Pre-Rally

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:23:00 +0000

We arrived at Paradise Oaks RV park last Friday and spent Saturday preparing for our 2 day pre-rally Smartphone class. Here's Jim in production mode for the class materials.

We were pleased with how it went - 14 people. 60% had iPhones, 40% Android. And most brought tablets as well. That was a bit surprising as we've had other groups that were overwhelmingly Android. I think everyone learned a lot - our hope is that they now understand their phones enough to continue learning because it is a never ending process. We also believe that the best way to learn is to teach, so we had several exercises where people paired up to work thru an assignment. We always learn something new too! My favorite tidbit this time was about Evernote Hello, and how it can scan business cards and read the names and phone numbers for searching. I've used many other systems for keeping and categorizing business cards and nothing has ever stuck. This looks awesome. And it's free.

Unfortunately, Jim and I have both been fighting colds and are not at 100%. The main TechnoGeek Learning Rally starts this afternoon and we slept in late.

It's a beautiful, but cold day here in Bushnell. That's our RV in the foreground, and Phil May's parked just 2 sites down. Tracey isn't with him this time as she had to fly back to England to handle some medical issues. We miss her terribly! I'm afraid some people may have come just on the reputation of Tracey's famous cooking. This time, we hired a local caterer to fill in.

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Dentists, Leprechauns, and Butterflies

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:58:00 +0000

We love life on the road, but we also love having a place we call home with so many connections, friends, and familiar places.
On the way to Fort Lauderdale from Peace River, we used Jim’s new Microsoft Surface Pro tablet, with MS Streets and Trips installed, to navigate. We've been looking forward to this. Our first few years on the road Streets and Trips was our sole mapping/navigating system. Then came the Garmin, Rand McNally, Google Navigation on the smartphone, and others. We continue to do the planning on Streets and Trips, and now with the Windows 8 tablet, we want to get back to Navigating with it too ..

Microsoft Windows 8 Surface Pro running Streets and Trips

We only had a week here in Fort Lauderdale, but it was full. Jim and I both took care of some Doctor and Dentist visits. I had appointments with both Mom’s accountant, and ours – and I got all the tax returns done and filed!
I visited Mom and took her to one of our favorite nearby attractions, Butterfly World. What great photo opps there are there!

She enjoyed it, but she tired quickly. She had a cold. Such a weird thing about her Alzheimers - she doesn't even know what a cold is, she denies being sick. She just says she needs kleenex for her drippy nose.
We also got together with friends several different times, the most colorful was for St. Patrick's Day - Mary Helen always puts together a great group of people and wonderful food - so when she invited us to her Irish dinner, we jumped at the opportunity. Her friend, Jim, has a DeLorean car. He said, since it was made in Ireland, he was obligated to drive it on St. Patrick's Day. It made quite a hit.

As did the Corned Beef and Cabbage traditional Irish dinner.

It was sad to be at our home RV park (Paradise Island) without Odie. He's been with us since the beginning. To some, we're simply known as Odie's parents ... and we had to break the news to them. Sometimes I feel awful for having made the decision to put him down. Other times I know it was the best thing to do ... best isn't always easy. Still other times, I am motivated by new beginnings. Jim and I have gone for a 2 mile walk almost every morning for the last week. Jim tore up the horribly stained carpet in our living room area and found the linoleum was under 80% of it! I bought a little throw rug to cover the rest, and it's like we have a new RV! We used to talk about some of the things we would do when we didn't have a dog to take care of ... now, what were they?

We just had to get rid of the horribly stained carpet regardless of what was underneath. What we found was just great.

The Bugs Won

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:36:00 +0000

We’ve been battling bugs ever since we bought this motorhome. It was a used RV and it had been sitting on the lot for several months … in Florida. At first we didn’t see any bugs – I’m sure they did some heavy duty spraying as part of the cleanup process for sale. But, within a month, they started appearing. We’re Floridians, we’re used to bugs – but we didn’t like it.
These weren’t little ants – they were roaches. Not the huge Palmetto bugs, but the smaller German roaches. We were hoping that traveling to more northern areas of the country would convince them to leave us – but they are a hardy bunch. These are well-traveled roaches now.
They would disappear for a while, and we congratulated ourselves on our bug-killing efforts. But they always came back.
This week, after coming back to Fort Lauderdale from Peace River – they exploded. I’ve never seen so many. They have run us out of our own kitchen, we can’t eat there. We have to go out. We broke down and called an exterminator (Petri.) They told us that, indeed, these type of bugs are impossible to eradicate with consumer products. We’ve paid them $300 and they have to come 3 times.
This is difficult to arrange because we are leaving on Thursday to head north. We have our TechnoGeek Learning rally, then I’m taking a writing workshop with friends in Melrose, Florida, then we’ll be at the Roadtrek Technology and Camping Rally April 9-12. We were thinking of continuing north after that … but we were also considering coming back to Fort Lauderdale for the end of April as well. We’ve now surrendered our itinerary to the bugs and will definitely come back to get our second and third exterminator treatments!
The guy from Petri probably wondered why the question, “Do you have any pets?” turned me into a puddle of tears … but that made me think that Odie may have been the reason we never attacked these bugs with everything we could before. They have no protector now. Fire away.

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Guld) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:58:00 +0000

The world lost a great teacher yesterday. His name was Odie. Odie was a miniature Poodle, small in stature, but a giant in wisdom, philosophy and love.

I was his student for over twelve years.

Many of his lessons were about Staying in the Moment. If you lose your hold on the moment, take a nap.

How things are communicated can be more important than what is said. For instance, never bite when a growl will suffice. Listen more, bark less. Wag your tail often.

Greet your friends joyfully.

Practice obedience when it is in your best interest. Occasionally break the rules.

Time for a long nap, my friend. We'll miss you.

Many thanks.

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Goodbye Odie

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:02:00 +0000

The last 6 months have been tough. Odie’s had a heart murmur since we first got him at 2 years old (he was from Poodle Rescue) but it was classified at level 1-2, which doesn’t affect his health. Last September, I worried about an persistent cough and took him to a vet where we were in Sedalia, MO. Our home vet had mentioned that coughing could be a sign of the heart murmur getting worse. But this vet said, “No, the cough isn’t from the heart, it’s a collapsed trachea.” Well, is that good news or bad? But, he also listened to his heart and classified the murmur at stage 5-6. All bad news. But he was hanging in there.
When we got back to Ft. Lauderdale in late October, I took him to his primary vet with the idea that it may be time to put him down. The scariest thing was when he collapsed once – I thought it was a stroke, it could have been a seizure, or it could have been fainting for lack of blood flow – he just fell hard, in a twisted little pile of poodle. But, in a minute, he recovered fully and was livelier than before. Jim and I joked that he overheard us talking about putting him down, and he was trying to say, “Hey look at me! I feel Great!”
The Vet took some tests and prescribed some heart medication. That really made a difference, Odie wasn’t struggling to breathe anymore, he could sleep peacefully. But it was still clear that he was declining. The coughing continued and the collapsing episodes started up again. Sometimes he would collapse 3-4 times in a day. But he always recovered. And he still had good times – he still went for walks every day, just shorter ones. It was tough to get him to eat. Dog food was out of the question, but he still eagerly accepted bites of steak from our plate!
But, yesterday, I felt I saw real pain on his face as he tried to stretch but something caught him mid-stretch. I have seen this before and believe it was something intestinal. I couldn’t get him to eat at all – not even a piece of stew meat – and he wasn’t even drinking. Intestinal issues pass in a day or so, but I just said = “Enough.” It’s time to let him go. Whenever I’ve suggested that over the last few months, Jim has poo-poohed me. My sense is that Jim wasn’t ready to let go. But, yesterday he said, “I agree.”
I called a local vet and started to make an appointment for the following morning, then I looked at Odie in distress and asked if they had a time available that afternoon. They did. My greatest fear has been to wait too long. I didn’t want to spend a painful night with him, when it’s in my power to prevent that. We took him for a last walk to the nature trail we all love so much, but we had to carry him half the way. I think we made the right decision.
Since Odie has lived his whole life on the road – a car ride is not a bad omen for him. He loves car rides, and he loves going inside new places … even Veterinary offices! Wouldn’t you know, he was perky and making friends with everyone in the waiting room. I was in agony. Jim tried to comfort me. He picked Odie up and we both went into the exam room. They call it ‘putting them to sleep’ for a reason – that’s just what it’s like. Odie laid his head on my arm and we both stroked him. I didn’t know I had so many tears in me. Then we left to face life without our dear sweet Odie.
Jim tries to get me to focus on the good memories with Odie, and he’s right – there were SO many. Here’s one of the best – and we caught it on video:

With all that energy, people sometimes asked us, “Isn’t he hyper and drive you crazy in the RV?” Nope, he was as mellow as could be in the motorhome – he would just lay on his couch all day long as long as we were there, usually at our computers, he was content.

He didn’t like it when we were gone though. We would say that he Hated Rallies, because at RV Rallies we were gone most of the time.

We loved our Odie. Now we have to learn to live without him

Lots more pictures of Odie – from the beginning.

Click this title to listen

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:21:00 +0000

Just talking while driving in the rv Sent from Catch Notes for Android https://catch.com
Click on the title to this post to listen.

Renaissance Faire

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:49:00 +0000

Since we were in Fort Lauderdale for the week, and the Renaissance Faire was in process, we arranged to tag along as Jo Ellen took the grandkids to the faire. What a treat for the camera.

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A Week of Computer Clubs

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:44:00 +0000

After our Saturday all-day class for the Genealogy group, we had one seminar scheduled on Sunday afternoon for the Central Florida Computer Group. Some of them had also attended the day before so we decided not to do Picasa, Blogger or Photo Story. Instead, we presented our overview seminar we call Geeks on Tour: Technology for Travelers. We start out showing a little of our blog, which shows our lifestyle, then we show a video on how to make a blog. We explain how we use our smartphones as a WiFi hotspot to do all our web-based work wherever we are. We go on to explain about the different devices we use to plan our travels and navigate on the road. Then we throw in just a smidgen of our thousands of pictures all managed with Picasa, and end with our Facebook page and more tutorials.
We use technology to Plan, Preserve, and Share our travels – and that is what we teach - using the Tutorial Videos on our geeksontour.tv website. This seminar gets the most comments from the travelers in the crowd. It’s fun.
When we were done there, we drove back to the Elks Lodge where the RV was, packed up and hit the road. I figured that we’d sleep in a rest area or truck stop for the night, but Jim was feeling good enough to drive all the way back to Fort Lauderdale and we pulled in and parked well after dark – that’s not easy in a park as tight and full as this one is, but it was nice to be in place come morning. So we had the whole day to rest up and prepare for another computer club on Monday night. From 7-9pm we presented our Smartphone seminar to the Valencia Falls Computer User Group in Delray.
The next day it was a 1pm gig at Palm Isles in Boynton Beach teaching Facebook. Wednesday we taught Safe Computing at the Boca Raton Computer Society, and Thursday was Smartphones at Valencia Lakes.

Parked at Elks Lodge in Winter Park

Teaching Facebook to the Computer Club at Palm Isles

Teaching Safe Computing to the Boca Raton Computer Society

You might wonder how we got all these gigs and why we’re doing them. We got on the speaker’s bureau for the APCUG – Association of Personal Computer User Groups. They don’t pay us anything, but sometimes a few people in the audience will buy our DVD and/or membership. We’re doing if for marketing. Has it been worth it? The jury’s still out – but that’s how marketing goes right? You may not reap the benefits till a ways down the line. Meanwhile, it’s sure keeping our skills sharpened!

Genealogists need Picasa, Blogger, and Photo Story too!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:49:00 +0000

We know lots of people who are interested in researching their family tree. Neither Jim or I have pursued this hobby, but Jim’s sister, and my cousin have and we have tried to help by gathering and digitizing old family photos. Several of our friends in the RVing world have encouraged us to do our computer training for Genealogists and we’ve told them no – we have enough to keep up with now, we don’t want to get into Genealogy! But, no – Genealogists need to know how to manage their digital photos, make blogs, and produce slideshow movies to share. Yes! That is what we teach. Connie Bradish and her husband Peter arranged for us to teach these topics to their Genealogist group a couple years ago, and have been promoting us to their friends ever since. This past weekend we taught a full day of classes to the Central Florida Genealogist Society, partly because of Connie and Peter’s recommendation. Thanks guys! It was a great day.

We taught our standard topics of Picasa, Blogger, and Photo Story but with a focus on old family photos and stories, instead of our normal travel photos and stories.

Introduction to Picasa - the free program from Google for all your digital photo needs
Find your pictures, Organize, Edit, Caption, and Share. It's fast, it's easy, and its FREE from Google. Picasa can: transfer photos from camera, delete and organize photos, rename and caption, browse/view all photos on your computer, improve photo quality in many ways without touching your original, print, email and post to web, create slideshows, find faces and geotags, and backup to CD or DVD. It can even work with your video files. The best part is the fast and easy way to make all your photos look better. This you gotta see!
Using Picasa to Organize and Improve Old Family Photos
In this seminar we will start by snapping new pictures of old family photos. We will show how to store them in appropriate folders and still organize them by family branches. We will explain Picasa's face recognition feature and, best yet, we'll show how to make those old photos look better with just a few clicks.
Using Blogger.com for a free Family Website
This seminar will show, step-by-step, how to make and keep a Blog. It is the easist way to make your own website. It can be a public website, completely private, or shared with only family members. We will teach you how to write posts and pages, upload photos, maps, and even videos. We guarantee that, if you pay attention, you WILL be able to go back to your computer and create a Blog!
Using Photo Story 3 to make your Family Documentary Movie
Photo Story 3 is a free program that includes ability to add music and narration to your pictures. This is the easiest class we teach. It is so simple, so fun, and the end result is a movie directed by you. We will use the same family photos that we used in the Picasa session.

We showed how to:

Capture old family photos by simply snapping pictures of album pages	Then fix them up using the tools in Picasa, including text
Make a Movie like This with just a few clicks in Picasa	Or a movie like this using Photo Story 3

If you have a Genealogist group and would like a day of training like this, please contact us.

Summer Travel Plans: We expect our travels this summer to start in May and take us up the east coast to Washington D.C., then across to Wyoming for the big June RV rallies in Gillette. From Gillette we plan to keep west to Oregon, down thru California. By Fall, we should be headed back East, but we hope to spend some time in Arizona and not return to Florida until January.

Traveling Teachers and Lazydays

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 22:02:00 +0000

This has been a cool week of traveling and teaching. We left Fort Lauderdale on Monday and went to Lazydays campground in Tampa because we had two 'gigs' scheduled in the area.
We presented 'Cloud Computing' to Greater Tampa Bay Computer Users Group on Tuesday, then Facebook to Tampa SNUG on Friday.
Meanwhile, we had a fun stay at Lazydays. They have free breakfast and lunch available if you're staying in the RV park, and while we were in their dining room, we ran into several of our Geeks on Tour members who stopped us to say Hi! One of them mentioned that they were on their way to attend a class at Lazydays on smartphones. Cool! Can we come too? There's always more to learn. The class was taught by Dave Watkins and he did a great job. We enjoyed it so much that we came back the next morning for his social networking class. He surprised us with the first slide of his presentation:

Dave tells us that he's been following us for quite some time and enjoys our training as well! A mutual admiration society has been formed!

Lazydays was a hopping place! The only sites available were in overflow, meaning we were in a plain blactop parking lot with no water or sewer, but we had 50amp power - so we were happy. We took advantage of the free food, free classes, and of course the hot tub! When there was no free food, we went \to the cool little bar/cafe onsite called Exit 10. The second night we went we ran into another old friend from Datastorm days ... Mac McClellan. Great to see you Mac!

And, speaking of meeting up with people you haven't see for a while! My college boyfriend, who I haven't see for 40 years lives in the Tampa area and reconnected with me via email recently. So, we arranged to meet for lunch. Check out these pictures!

John and Chris in 1972 at college - Florida State

John and Chris after 40 years!

It was fun to reminisce!

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Riverside RV Park, Port Charlotte

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Guld) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:02:00 +0000

We love it when RV parks ask us to visit and present our seminars! This visit to Riverside was especially successful. Thanks to John Goodrich, who attended several of our seminars at the Good Sam rally in Daytona, we were invited to stay at Riverside and present our Smartphone seminar to their computer club at the park.

John introducing us to his computer group

He must have done an awesome job at promoting us because they usually have 35-40 people at their meetings and our audience was around 150!

We were warmly welcomed around the campfire in the evening

A friendly group and a great fire at Riverside RV campground!

And a nice paddle on the Peace River with the kayaking group in the morning. Whew! These retired folks wear us out!

Paddling with the Kayakers at Riverside RV Park in Port Charlotte