Geeks on Tour Blog

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Santa Brings a Quad-Copter

Jim has been wanting a quad-copter (aka drone) for at least 2 years. Last Christmas he got a little toy one that he played with for a few weeks before getting bored. The purpose of a quad copter - other than the fun of flying - is to take aerial video. We're in Arizona for the winter and we expect to spend some time in Quartzsite, where thousands of RVs park out in the desert. What a cool place to be able to take aerial video!
So, when he said he found the one he wanted at Fry's Electronics in Phoenix, we got it.
Here's a little video of his first flight:

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Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Florida Family Visit

Jim and I are from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We sold our house there in 2003 and have been on the road ever since. For the last several years we have wintered in Fort Lauderdale - getting plenty of time to spend with family. This year is different because the 3 big rallies that we always go to and present our technology seminars are all in the west in February and March.

We flew to Florida and stayed at my Mom's townhouse in Fort Lauderdale for nearly 6 weeks - 10/6 to 11/12/14 (minus the week in the Bahamas.) It's good to visit with Mom, even though Alzheimer's has taken her completely away from me, she still looks good, walks good, and enjoys a walk in beautiful surroundings.

I was glad that I could arrange for her brother, John to visit.

We also got to spend some time with the grandkids.

We're not quite sure what to do with kids!

In case you're worried that we're completely inept when it comes to grandparenting skills ... that is actually a bottle of blueberry soda!

We have lots of family birthdays in November. Jo Ellen celebrated her 60th with a big party, and we claimed it as the November birthday party for all of us.

It was a good visit. Feels weird to leave in a plane. We do like Florida, this will be where we continue to return, and whenever we choose to hang up the keys, this will be where we settle. In the US anyway. I am following our friends Donna and Stu with much interest - they were fulltime RVers and are now living in Ecuador! See their blog: http://ecuador-bound.blogspot.com/

On our way back to Arizona.

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Monday, October 20, 2014

Scuba Diving in the Bahamas

Ahhhh ... vacation! I know ... looking at our pictures, it appears that we are always on vacation. But, having a web-based business it feels like we are always working! One place I know we can't work is when we're underwater! So that's how we take our vacations. We try to take at least one dive vacation each year. This year we went to San Salvador in the Bahamas. A resort I've known about for a long time thru my USA Dive Club. They've led trips to Riding Rock resort on San Sal many times over the years, and we've never gone. This time we hooked up with a New Jersey dive shop and Jim's old friend Jimmy Lyon.

The diving was SOO nice! 84 degree water. Sheer wall dropoffs, and lots of swimthrus, tunnels, and canyons. We had several shark following us around on every dive. Beautiful Caribbean Reef sharks. There were also some very friendly grouper - I could even pet them.

Jim took video with his GoPro camera on every dive. Here's one 3.5 minute video that he edited down just for you!

http://youtu.be/wwvQKoR3K-8

When we weren't diving, we were relaxing on the beach or on the veranda off the bar. Great sunsets every night. I finished one book and started another!

Lots more pictures in our October Album.

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Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Thousand Trails, Verde Valley

With nothing on our calendar for a week or so, this seemed like a good time to stay at one of our membership parks with Thousand Trails. Verde Valley in Cottonwood, AZ is one of our favorites.
Beautiful desert walks, and a very nice hot tub.

A big problem though, is that the Verizon signal is not very strong here. We can get on enough to do emails, but it's too slow to get videos uploaded or any real web work done. And, we certainly can't do our broadcast "What Does this Button Do?" from here. So, we rescheduled it for the following Wednesday when we would be in Fort Lauderdale. We did take some time to record a video 'trailer' though. (http://youtu.be/tQxrrMJlVRY)

There was enough connection to check in with RVillage however. To our surprise, we saw that Margo Armstrong was in the park. We met Margo in this very same park several years ago (Oct 2007), and we've loosely kept in touch. She even did an article on us in her blog, "Moving on with Margo." You can read it here: Geeks On Tour Made a Stop Here.

Thru RVillage, we were able to schedule a Get Together for any RVillagers in the park. This way we got to visit with Margo as well as meet some new friends, Scott and Jackie Cundiff. Turns out they're geeks too! They have at least as many tech toys as we do! It was fun to chat! Click the link on their names to see their blog.

Next on our calendar is a visit to Florida and scuba trip to the Bahamas, so we arranged to store the RV here at Verde Valley and fly out of Phoenix. This is the first time we've both been away from our motorhome except for when it's been in for service. Felt pretty weird cleaning out the refrig and leaving everything with no power for nearly 2 months.

Then we drove the car to Phoenix and stayed at the Hospitality Suites overnight, ready to fly out of Sky Harbor the next day. The Hospitality Suites has a GREAT deal called Park and Fly where they let you leave the car in their parking lot for the whole time you're gone! They provide a shuttle to and from the airport. There's even free happy hour and free breakfast. We heard about this from our friends Don and Kim Greene of Harvest Hosts. They live in Prescott and fly to worldwide destinations all the time. What a find! Thanks Kim and Don for telling us about this.

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Thursday, October 02, 2014

Hot Springs!

Other than scuba diving, soaking in a hot tub is probably our favorite thing! We seek out Hot Springs, but we haven't found more than a handful along our route and with RV parking nearby. One of those is in Tonopah, Arizona and it's called El Dorado Hot Springs. Desert Funky - is how I'd describe it. This is the third time we've been here in our travels and it's only gotten better. We had a 50Amp RV site, we were the only RV there. And, they've added new, private, tubs since we were there last.