Being a Tourist is hard work!
The Salem Trolley picked us up right at the campground. Very nice. And the tourguides are oh-so informative.
He said he was happy to pick us up at our ‘aahh V’ 
We passed pretty harbor views.
Then, our first stop was the Salem Witch museum.
Learned a lot. Bought the hat.
Then we walked the streets of Salem.
I love the ivy covered walls.
Must … have … sustenance.
Ahhh! Guinness. At Tavern on the Green.
Visited the Pirate’s Museum.
Back home, we took Odie for a walk and let him cool off in Salem harbor.
Today we’re going into Boston to visit the Kennedy Presidential library.
Thank goodness for comfortable shoes.
Video Interview of Geeks on Tour
We just got the link to this video that was taken of us by John DiPietro of RVeNews.
Greetings from Massachusetts
The NEAR rally is over. The last day was, indeed, our best. We made enough sales to cover our fees anyway. A big part of going to rallies is to promote our website (www.GeeksOnTour.com) and we did that.
Then it’s back on the road. Such a pretty drive through Vermont and New Hampshire. You can’t help but wonder what this looks like in the fall.
Our destination for the next few days is Salem, Massachusetts. We’re going to be tourists. Oh Boy! My Favorite.
Our site isn’t much to write home about – and we’re having some trouble with the electric. It’s HOT and we need our A/C here.
Where we’re parked, just north of Boston, in a Salem city park
But, it’s just a short walk, within the Winter Island City Park to:
A closer look at that pretty Schooner reveals a flag that reads, “FAME.” So we looked it up on the Web and see that we could take a sunset cruise for $25 each. hmmmm
More Rally
We spent all day yesterday at our booth. There was pretty good traffic until late in the day. It was fun meeting and talking to people. Like the couple from Care-a-Vanners.
What a cool way to travel! They pick out several Habitat for Humanity projects around the country and schedule their travels accordingly. They get to travel where they want to, but they have a purpose. A typical ‘build’ lasts two weeks where they accomplish something valuable – get lots of exercise – and get to know other great people. If we didn’t have to work to make our living, I’d love to do that.
Standing at a booth may be physically exhausting – boy do my feet hurt – but it’s definitely not something that keeps you physically fit! Especially when the booth next to us is giving away pancakes! Thanks to Roxie and Charles Marston, we at least got our on our bikes for a little ride in the evening! We rode up a hill to get some pictures. Here is just a small portion of the 550 rigs at the rally.
Here’s Charles (he’s sitting) doing his Frustrated Maestros thing. That’s another cool part of FMCA – Frustrated Maestros are people who play instruments or sing and they’re a strong organization within the FMCA family. Looks like fun!
We’re off to teach our Google Earth class today – hopefully some people have gotten the word. Have you ever known a venue that scheduled seminars back to back??? I mean – we’re scheduled from 9-10, and the next seminar (Mac’s Fire Safety) is scheduled from 10 – 11. When are we supposed to tear down our audio-visual equipment and let him set up his??? And, how are the people supposed to get to their next seminar?
Then, the rest of the day we’re back at the booth. I’m hoping for good sales on this last day. Otherwise we would have been better off on a Habitat build! I really don’t understand why sometimes we have people lined up to buy our videos and other times nobody cares. We have a lot to learn about sales.
Pub Grub
I love our RV and I’m very comfortable with the little kitchen and eating at home, but sometimes I want to Go Out!
Today was a bit of a long day. We’re at the rally, and we have a booth. We were scheduled for our seminar today … the one that was titled RVing and Computers that was supposed to be Picasa. We did remedy it by putting a correction in the daily newsletter. And, I also spent most all day yesterday putting together an overview video. Trying to make everyone happy.
It worked .. kind of … but I was not at all happy with the seminar overall. We had 50-60 people there. But I was too up-tight to enjoy the smaller audience. And we spent every other hour today at our booth. We made enough money to pay for a dinner out and that was really what I wanted to do!
So we fired up Google Earth and asked it to show us all the restaurants in the area. We found ‘Backstage Pub.’ That sounded really good! And it was. We sat at the bar and struck up a conversation with Amy who works in a local law office, and who spent a lot of time on Long Beach Island – Jim’s home town.
We had such fun chatting! It reminded me of another pub in Celina, Ohio. A good way to meet the locals!
Cheers!
Rally in Vermont
We had a pretty drive this morning from The Adirondacks in New York, across Lake Champlain into Vermont.
Crossing Lake Champlain at Chimney Point:
You can tell when we’re getting close to the rally because it started to rain!
But all was cleared up by the time we pulled into the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds where we’ll be for the next week with the FMCA NorthEast Area Rally (NEAR.)
Now we have a dilemma!
We thought that we were set up to do two of our seminars here – 1) Picasa: Managing Digital Photos and 2) Using Google Earth. They each have at least 1 1/2 hours of material that go along with detailed handouts for the audience to follow along and refer to later.
But that’s not how our two seminars are listed in the program:
“RVing and Computers.”
- Thursday, August 13: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
- Saturday, August 15: 9:00am – 10:00am
The way I see it, we have 2 choices:
- Try to get it straightened out with the rally organizers and get the correct seminar description posted in the daily newsletter.
pro: being listed in the daily newsletter can be good additional exposure
con: many people never even get the daily newsletter and have already planned their seminar attendance by reading the program. - Throw together an overview seminar to match the description … a little Picasa, a little Blogger, a little about our lifestyle, and tell them to buy our Show-Me videos for more.
pro: I’ve been wanting to make a composite seminar to offer – let’s use this opportunity! Instead of concentrating on teaching one topic, it would be more of a ‘here’s what travelers should know how to do’ and ‘here’s some samples-how we use Picasa and Blogger and wireless Internet – and samples of our videos that will teach you!’ Who knows, maybe we’ll sell more of our videos this way?!
con: Our reputation is built more on going into depth on our topics. We often get comments about how people enjoy the fact that we’re not selling anything in our seminars. We’re really teaching something. If they like it enough and want to learn more – they’ll buy the videos. Or sign up for the membership online. We see ourselves kind of like musicians in this regard … selling our CDs after the concert.
I can’t decide … I’d like to use one of my lifelines and poll the audience! What do you think?
Kayaks get Wet!
And so do we. And so does Odie!
We traveled into upstate New York .. started seeing hills!
We had reservations at Schroon River park. It’s a good thing. This place is full. It’s crowded, but it’s pretty with lots of trees. Here’s our site:
We woke up to a gorgeous day today .. so we asked about arrangements for paddling on the river. What service! Someone in the park drove us in our car to the put-in spot, then drove our car back to the campground. So we got to float/paddle for about 3 hours and end up back home with our car waiting for us.
Lots of water in this river. And, there was even some whitewater. Odie had a few adventures…
But we always got him back! That yellow life vest has a handy handle on the back.
Travel Mode
How about that?! Two posts from Jim! You know why? Because I showed him how to use Live Writer. It makes blogging that much easier. I’m putting LiveWriter on my list of video tutorials to make – anyone who blogs will love it.
Have I told you lately how much I love this lifestyle? Travel, Work, Play. Our whole summer is planned around RV rallies. First it was FMCA Int’l Convention in Perry, GA – then it was on to The Rally in Albuquerque, NM – Escapades in Missouri ….
July was a big one – another FMCA Int’l Convention in Bowling Green, Ohio. That one finished on July 24 and next comes the FMCA NE Area rally in Essex Junction, VT. But not till August 12. That’s 2 1/2 weeks to go 600 miles.
Perfect! And, there’s even some membership parks on the way. That means free sites … well, not exactly free – just prepaid. We pay $140/year for Resorts of Distinction (ROD) and $500/year for Thousand Trails (TT) But, it’s just SO nice to pull into a park and know that you don’t have to get out any money to stay there.
Thousand Trails Preserves always feel like Home.
Here’s Kenisee Lakes just east of Cleveland:
Always lots of open space for walking. Trees, Lakes and nice views.
And Pickleball! Such great exercise.
The next membership park we found on our route is Shroon River (ROD) right in the middle of the Adirondacks. But, that’s over 400 miles from Kenisee Lakes … at least 2 driving days for us! I also don’t like to drive more than 2 days in a row – actually I don’t care to drive at all … Jim does that. We stayed one night at a Passport America park – that’s a 1/2 price deal. $15 for an overnight.
Now, we’re splurging on a really nice park for two nights – $40/night. It better be nice! It’s connected to a casino, which usually means inexpensive?! ooohhhh – it is nice though. Really good Wi-Fi at our site. So we’re doing all those downloads that have been waiting for better connections. Pretty too. And a hot tub!
So here’s the travel itinerary between rallies:
*one rally over
1 hour drive then:
1 week at ROD park, work, relax, tour Erie Islands
4 hours of driving
visit Rock n Roll Hall of Fame en route
3 nights at Thousand Trails *home* – work, relax, pickleball
3 1/2 hours driving
1 night at a Passport park
3 1/2 hours driving
2 nights at fancy park!
3 hours driving (estimate)
3 nights at ROD park in Adirondacks – beautiful country
couple hours drive
*next rally begins
Don’t pinch me OK? I don’t want to wake up. This is such a beautiful dream.
While Jim’s driving, I’m enjoying the scenery and letting my mind wander and conjure and plan. For a couple of hours I read out loud from the book I’m reading on my Kindle now … ‘Free’ by Chris Anderson (I paid $9.95 for it We also listen to music or NPR with our Sirius satellite radio, and sometimes I use quiz cards to read questions and see if Jim or I can answer. The last bunch came from the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame … “What crime did Jim Morrison commit in Miami in 1969?” Both Jim and I knew that one! And, it made us reminisce about when we visited Morrison’s grave in Paris – 2001.
When we pull in to a park, we get settled in – then we take Odie for a walk and take a look around. Then we check email, do some work etc. IF there’s something special like a hot tub or a pickleball court, we’ll take advantage of that. Then we do more computer work, have some dinner, take Odie for another walk. Sometimes we watch TV or a video .. sometimes we just stick with our computers all night till time to go to bed – and that varies anytime from 9pm to 1am! Probably depending on if we had any wine and how much!
So, right now its 9am. I’ve been up since about 6:30 – sitting at the computer. Jim’s at his computer too. It’s time to take Odie for a walk. Then, we’ll probably take the shuttle over to the Casino and have breakfast. The rest of the day will be working … I’m putting together a small book of all our Picasa tips – we want to have a printed version to sell at the next rally.
Ok, I’ll stop rambling now.
DataStorm RIP
By Jim
We are retiring our dish.
You who have been following us for a while know how much we love our Internet satellite service. We had it installed in ‘03 before we left Florida, our first year out.
Back then, cellular broadband was almost non-existent and Wi-Fi was in its infancy. Dial-up was out of the question for us.
Our fledgling business plan was based on the ability to be connected with high-speed Internet wherever we traveled. Satellite Internet was the only viable solution at the time.
So, we bit the bullet and forked over the $6K for the (then) state-of-the-art F1 DataStorm with the 4020 Hughes modems and D1 controller. Service with one static IP address was $115/month through Ground Control.
Over the years, we only had a few problems that were readily handled by MotoSat or Ground Control. The DataStorm Users Group and especially founder Don Bradner were our lifeline and support.
I turned off service last fall while we were in Florida for the winter because our home park, Paradise Island, has good Wi-Fi. Besides, our 3rd set of modems had finally bit the dust and I needed to upgrade.
Since we left Florida this year, I replaced the Upper Control Board on the mount, got the newest D4 controller and a new 7000S modem. I figured I was all set. Wrong. I was not able to get everything working together. Hours were spent on the phone with MotoSat technical support. More hours were spent on site by a MotoSat tech at the FMCA Convention in Bowling Green. They finally decided that a new LNB and arm might fix it. But our dish was just too old, they didn’t have a replacement to send.
We could spend big bucks and replace the dish.
What we will do is use our Verizon cellular broadband and Wi-Fi when it is available to access the Internet.
Next year we might replace the dish for our travels west. There are still lots of places we want to go where cell towers are scarce and Wi-Fi is not available.
Like we always say, “If you *Need* the Internet, you need all three ways to connect. Satellite, Cellular, and Wi-Fi”
Rock and Roll!
By Jim
The music genre has been around my whole life. DJ Alan Freed coined the term way back in 1951. It is the rallying cry for an entire generation.
Cleveland is the home to the Hall of Fame and Museum.
The architecture is by I.M. Pei. It’s very reminiscent of the Louvre in Paris.
The place was pretty crowded with a line extending outside for tickets.
Bruce Springsteen was the featured rocker. I met Bruce and the E Street band back in 1973. They were playing in a small venue on Long Beach Island and staying in a motel across the street from our family deli-restaurant. I cooked their breakfast and lunch while they were there. I had a front row seat for one of their shows and was blown away by the performance.
The museum does great job of taking you through the history of Rock and Roll with videos, pictures and artifact exhibits.
You aren’t allowed to take your own pictures or video in the museum or we would have lots more here.
The museum store is huge and few visitors get out without buying a tee shirt or some music.
Here I am sporting my purchase at breakfast at Kenisee Lakes Thousand Trails where we’re staying for the next couple of days before moving on to Essex Junction for the FMCA Northeast Area Rally.
Chris got a Janis Joplin video and was up late singing along. Give her enough whiskey and she will do her Janis for you sometime, if you’re lucky. I have blackmail tape to prove it.
