San Luis Obispo

Of all the places we’ve visited in this country, there are only a few that we would be happy living year round. San Luis Obispo county is one of them. I actually did live here, in Morro Bay, back in 1980-83. We drove up to the street I used to live on and snapped a photo …

There’s a great campground right on the beach at Morro Strand, but they didn’t have a site big enough for us, so we found a friendly Elks Lodge right in San Luis Obispo. This worked out great because it was so close to my good friend, Liz. We were able to visit for a few dinners, and a few drives. One day we drove up to San Simeon – home of the stunning Hearst Castle which we visited another time we were here – see blog post.


This time we walked out on the pier at San Simeon in hopes of seeing some whales. We did see some spouts a ways out, but I didn’t catch a picture. It was a gorgeous day though, with good friends.

Racing with a flock of Pelicans along the Pacific coast

The picture above is Liz and me on the Pier at San Simeon. Hearst castle is on top of the hill in the background. All the land surrounding the castle is Hearst Ranch. Liz worked very hard for many years to preserve that land. She vows to write the story of that project one of these days, meanwhile, here's a website for the Hearst Ranch Conservation project.

While we were here, we gave a few seminars for local computer clubs. Cloud Computing for the SLO Bytes main meeting of their computer club, and an advanced Picasa class for the Digital Photo special interest group of that club.

Presenting our Cloud Computing seminar for the San Luis Obispo computer club - SLOBytes

Next, we went up to Paso Robles and presented our "Technology for Travelers" seminar.

I really what love the SLOBytes photography group wrote on their website about our special Advanced Picasa Presentation.

Then we had a few days off before the next work assignment. My friend, Melinda came down from where she lives in Reno to join us here on the coast. I am just in heaven being with two of my longest and dearest friends - both at once!

Melinda came down with her sister and they stayed in Melinda's truck camper at the Morro Strand park. So we got to hang out till sunset there.

We also visited an Apple Farm, which was just a short drive from where we were staying in SLO.  They told us they had 72 varieties of apples all total throughout the year. They offered tastes of the different varieties. Like a wine tasting!

And the ride back was gorgeous.

They sure could use some rain around here. They're in the worst drought in generations. No fires so far in this area though, and it is so beautiful.

Since we had a whole 10 days in San Luis Obispo, I also took some time to go smartphone shopping for Liz. She said she wanted to join the 21st century, but she also seemed to hold pretty tight to her simple, old, flip phone. So, I recommended she get a tablet as a way to learn about mobile devices without letting go of the familiar phone. We found that Verizon had a sale on the LG G-Pad for $100 w/2 yr contract. That means it has it's own Verizon internet connection - no WiFi required. Basically, it does everything a smartphone does, but it's bigger, and it doesn't do regular phone calls. I thought this tablet was so nice, I did a little video on it here: http://youtu.be/kn6hphFbH4I

Ancient Charms and ancient friends

Well, maybe not ancient, but Arynne and I have been friends since high school, and that was quite a while ago! We were roommates in college and left together in 1973 to travel. She ended up in California – I lived in Canada for a while, then followed her to California, where we were roommates again in Berkeley. While I continued the traveling life, she has made California her home. Currently she lives in a dream house right on the coast a little south of Santa Cruz. Check out this view:

Every night she gets to look at that. I can see why she doesn't want to leave the house. She's been an artist, jewelry maker, weaver, and costumer most all of her adult life, and she sells her wares at Rennaissance faires and on her website, Ancient Charms. Her latest pieces are inspired by the Steampunk genre. She puts clockwork pieces together and calls them Time Trinkets.
At the current Rennaissance Faire, her booth is knows as Ancient Amulets.
When we were here in 2004, I posted a picture of the weaving she made for me.

She made arrangements with a neighbor for us to park in their driveway. It was a bit tight, but we made it. It was great to be roommates again for a few days!

We went to a local farmers markets, visited the Monterey Aquarium, had a few dinners, and watched whales play in Monterey Bay.

We even did our weekly show #10 from her neighbors' driveway, and she sat in - even making a short appearance!

After leaving Arynne's, we drove a short distance to the Elk's lodge in Monterey. What a great location, right in the middle of Monterey.
Life is Good!

Celebrate!

What are we celebrating? So many things! First of all, when I woke up this day I just wanted to celebrate the fact that we had an empty day on our calendar! We've been working hard, and playing hard. That's been wonderful, but I really love blank days. As I woke up feeling in a celebratory mood, I just kept thinking about all the things we had to celebrate:

• Good Health - especially since we've lost weight (Jim 70 lbs, me 20)
• A really sweet little business - we're sharing our passion for learning personal technology. It's something that so many people want in today's world. We get to see customers/members/fans face to face at our seminars, but make our living primarily from our website - working in the quiet privacy of our home on our own schedule. We even have members in Australia and India. I think the Membership business model is the best way to have a business on the web. 
• An adventurous lifestyle. We've been living on the road for 11 years now and still love every minute and every mile.
• Being in love! Jim and I have always had a good partnership and it's only deepened over the years on the road. We both share the same dreams, and we're making each other's dreams come true.
• A beautiful sunny day in California - a place that millions of people travel to for their vacations. For today at least, we're living here!
• Money in the bank. Income from our business has increased over the years. Slow, but steady. We are now paying our way with what we earn. We still have to dip into savings for RV repairs and Scuba vacations, but we make enough to buy all our tech toys, and food, fuel, and campground fees. At the moment there is actually a surplus in the bank because nearly 100 new and renewing members paid us at the recent FMCA convention in Redmond, OR. 
• I just don't see how life can be any better than this!

As I kept thinking about all the reasons to celebrate, I felt I was going to explode! OK, so what to do? Let me think ... we're in Sonoma County, California, second only to neighboring Napa County in the number of wineries. I took a look at a tourist map of wineries, and saw the perfect answer ... Korbel Champagne Cellars!

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I love pictures, and I take a LOT of them. Almost all with my smartphone these days. I know it can also take video, (we teach this stuff!) but I rarely think to use the video. One thing I so love about Jim is that he thinks of these things - at the moment - not later on like I do!  DOH! Here's what he posted to his Facebook timeline on this day:

Post by Jim Guld.

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What Does This Button Do?

Golden Gate Computer Society and Petaluma Elks

Our next ‘gig’ was to present one seminar and two hands-on classes for the Golden Gate Computer Society. They are located in San Rafael, CA and there are not a lot of campgrounds in the area, especially not affordable campgrounds! So we took advantage of our Elks membership and stayed at the Petaluma Elks lodge – the same place we stayed when we spoke to the Golden Gate club last year.  50amps and full hookups, we really like the Petaluma Elks lodge for RV parking. And, there’s a large park with good bike trails just down the street.

The seminar for GGCS was on the topic of smartphones and tablets, we give an introduction for people who don’t know what they are, then we demonstrate specific features. It went well. Many people said they were amazed at all that these devices can do – they had no idea! If you're interested, here's our class handout.

The next day, we held 2 hands on classes; one for Android phones and tablets and another for iPhones and iPads. We had about a dozen people for each class. We said we would take up to 20, but I was glad for the smaller number. Unless we have teaching assistants who can help people – a dozen is about as much as Jim and I can handle in a hands-on situation. One guy took both classes and told us he would travel many miles to attend anything we taught! He’s been a member and following our teachings for several years. We like people who like to learn!

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California Russian River

One of my favorite songs is Red Tail Hawk by Kate Wolf, but I know it by the refrain, “The Golden Rolling Hills of California.” I thought of it a lot during our drive this day.

Whenever there’s a Thousand Trails park anywhere near our route, that’s where we’ll go. We pay about $500 a year to be a member of Thousand Trails, then we stay at their parks without getting any money out of our pockets! So nice. It takes 25 nights’ stay then, to bring the cost to $20/night. Any more than that and we’re getting a really good deal.

We’ve never been to the Russian River TT before so it was a treat. It’s a very hilly park, not easy to drive the rig and get parked, but we did. In fact, the neighbors even applauded Jim’s parking job. He gives me all the credit for guiding him, but I know he could almost do it without me.  I think it’s all in getting the right approach – that’s the hard part. Then I just fine tune the position and tell him when to stop.
The park was old, and not very luxurious, but it was a quick walk down to the pretty riverside.

THE INTERNET WAS GOOD! We looked it up beforehand on our Coverage App, as well as looking at actual Cell Tower locations. Those indicated that it would be pretty good, but we still didn’t believe it. Thousand Trails parks are known for being in out of the way places with no good Internet connections. Check out these actual speedtest results from our site:

This was very important to us because we’d like to stay till Sunday, and Sunday morning is our Internet Show, “What Does This Button Do?” We really need good Internet in order to do that show. And, we did! Here’s the whole show: Episode 9 video on Youtube, if you’re interested in learning about Smartphones and Tablets.

Oh yeah ... we felt the earthquake! This from WikiPedia: The 2014 South Napa earthquake occurred near American Canyon, California on August 24 at 3:20 a.m. local time, measuring at 6.0 on the moment magnitude
It woke us up, but we just rolled over and went back to sleet. An RV is a good home to have in an earthquake, it's very used to shaking!