Consider this - you have good friends that live about 100 miles away. You want to get together for the weekend. Here's the invitation: "Why don't you guys come to our place and visit for the weekend? But, you know we don't have much space and our house is kinda messy, so Bring Your Own House, Ok?"
That's exactly what us 'homers' (people who live full-time in their motorhomes) get to do! Lynne and John are living on the west coast of Florida while they work on a 6 month project. We're parked on the east coast. It's about a 2 hour drive. Then we can be neighbors for the weekend and GO DIVING! And the folks here at
Paradise Island are real good about arranging a site next door.
The weather was extremely cooperative this weekend, and we were able to borrow 2 kayaks for Lynne and John. So, to the beach we go.
First you unload the kayaks.
Then you set up your gear ... with Jim overseeing of course!
We drag our kayaks the short distance to the water.
And we're ready to go. I don't have a waterproof camera this time, so - no pictures from the water.
Regular lobster season started today, so, you guessed it, Jim caught some. John actually caught one too! But, it was a female with eggs, so he let it go.
Sunday morning was just as spectacular (even though there was major thunderstorms overnight) so ... we did it all over again.
And Dick(aka Commander Kayuba)and Geri, whose kayaks we borrowed, were there to officially welcome Lynne and John into the
Kayuba scuba club.
Then we went home and had lobster omelets for brunch! Yum.
It sure felt wierd to be at a motorhome rally without our motorhome! And, it would have been very nice to have our home to stay in. As it was, there was NO VACANCY in the whole city of Minot. We had to stay 60 miles away. Our reservation was in Rugby, the geographical center of North America.
The accomodations were less than elegant however, so Frank kept trying to find something else and ended up with an exquisite bed and breakfast in Anamoose, ND. It's called SageHill and it really was spectacular, but it was 55 miles away so there wasn't much improvement there. No WiFi and not even any cell phone signal. We had to get up very early to partake of the gourmet breakfast, get on the road, and make it to our hotspot in time.
All this driving did give us the opportunity to see the beautiful countryside. It looks to me like all the sunflower seeds in the stores must come from North Dakota. The fields went on for miles and miles, and they were brilliant.
Our last night in Minot, we figured some folks may have left early so we checked the hotels again and found rooms at Fairfield Inn with a restaurant in walking distance and free WiFi in our rooms. I would sum it up this way: our first motel was too hard, the second was too soft and the last was just right. But, it all was an adventure. Thanx Frank!
Now we're in Bismark hoping that Northwest airlines doesn't strike and prevent us from flying back to Fort Lauderdale at 8am tomorrow. Wish us luck.
It was so fun to see people learn how WiFi works. This woman was incredulous at how easy and fast it was.
We also learned a lot. It sure seemed like an inordinate amount of problems were with the HP and Compaq computers. And I really learned to dislike the Linksys cards. People who had Sony laptops had very few problems! You probably already know that we like Sony Vaios :-) The most interesting thing was that a lot of people experienced fluctuating and dropping signal. It finally occurred to us that having this many WiFi computers so close together was probably creating RF interference. When there were fewer people it was no problem.
We probably saw 200 people a day using the WiFi and helped many of them with both WiFi and other questions. People were thrilled to get all this free help.
We also gave 2 seminars. The first one had about 300 people in the audience! The second had at least 100.
And, they had a lot of questions.
Coach Connect is also entering the 
It wasn't all work though. We also had a great time being in North Dakota. That'll be my next post.
Here's what N Dakota looks like from the air.
And, here I am creating this post with the free WiFi in the Bismark airport.
More later..
I just love their story. Gill grew up in Venezuela. His family moved here 11 years ago. He plays piano and guitar. He sings beautifully. And he used to make his living playing at a local restaurant. Gabi was born in Czech Republic, grew up in Germany, and was just here on vacation 6 or so years ago, when she happened to eat dinner in Gill's restaurant. She claims it was love at first sight, they spent the rest of the night walking on the beach, but she had to go back to Germany the *next* day!
Well, as all modern love stories go ... they kept in touch via email. (They tell me they kept those hundreds of emails and have them printed in a notebook somewhere!) Even the emails stopped after a while and they lost touch for 3 years. Then Gill sent one more email ... she responded. She visited here, he visited there. He waited for her to finish her University degree in Germany, then she moved here and they got married in Miami. This summer they had a second, traditional wedding in Czech Republic with all their families. What a beautiful video they showed us! I'd love to visit there someday. It would be tough to drive our motorhome over ... though I know of people who put their motorhomes on a boat to be able to use them in Europe ... hmmm, that's a thought.
Gill will finish his degree in Civil Engineering from University of Miami this fall. He got his American citizenship last year - just in time for the election! They are still in process of moving, and waiting for the baby to arrive in December.
I think Jim and I smile a lot, but they have us beat. We were just blinded by the radiance of these two!
Thanx so much, Gill and Gabi, for having us over to dinner. And, where can we get some of that wonderful Czech mustard?