Geeks on Tour Blog

Monday, August 03, 2015

FMCA Madison

Little movie about the rally, made by Google Photos. (https://youtu.be/3PC-uLRSYt8)

This was a great rally for Geeks on Tour. Packed seminar rooms and a steady flow of people by our table, most of them signing up to become new members, or paying their membership renewal! Don't ask me anything about the rally in general, because we didn't see any of it!

FMCA always treats us very good. We've been presenting technology seminars for them since 2005! They gave us a parking spot at a nearby campground with hookups, so we were far from the madding crowd. We actually prefer to be close to the action, but I gotta admit, this spot was very pleasant.

We started with an overview "Technology for Travelers" seminar. I think our biggest crowd was for Google Maps.

And, the smartphone class is probably the most fun these days. We try to remember to take a selfie in that one.

This is a picture of our table, along with the "Geeky Tiki."

Surprisingly, the Google Photos class did not have a very big audience. About 100 I figured. But it was being Live-Streamed over the web and we were told much later that the viewing audience was 830! Wow!

I think the class I was most pleased with was the hands-on Smartphone Photography.

We offered this class twice in FMCA Pomona because I believed we needed to cap it at a maximum of 20 people. So we offered 2 to give enough opportunity for people to come. It's a 3 hour class and we're helping people one-on-one while trying to keep the class on track. It's hard work and we decided we would not do two sessions this time - so we increased the maximum to 30 people. I was nervous. But it worked out fine. We make people buddy-up. Each person gets a workbook, and we explain that the class is kinda like learning to swim by being thrown into the deep end. We have exercises for them to do and they learn by doing. I kept cracking the whip and moving things along, so we got thru (most) all of the material even with 30 people! And lots of people came up to us afterward saying that was one of the best classes they'd ever taken! They learned SO much that they didn't know they could do with their phones. AND they had fun.
For Geeks Who Teach, it just doesn't get any better than that!

All in all, the rally went so well that I find myself wondering, "Where do we go from here?" Can we just keep doing this same stuff for a while? Or have we run our course? ???

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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Travel to the Next Rally

First, I just have to show you a little bit of video to get the rhythm of the road, and the beauty of the midwest.

When we're in serious driving mode like this, one of our favorite things to do is read a book. I read out loud while Jim drives. I know, we could get audio books, then I wouldn't have to work so hard! But, I kinda like it. Right now, we're reading the book Abundance, and it's making us feel SO good!

There really are possible solutions for all the seemingly insoluble problems of the world and technology plays a huge part. I said "possible" ... "probable" is another story, but it makes us feel good anyway.

We stayed overnight in Cincinatti at the small campground provided by the FMCA for members. We had to stay put till Sunday afternoon so we could do our Sunday show "What Does This Button Do?" We put episode #46 'in the can.' Here it is:

When we left Cincinatti, we made it to Normal, Illinois and stayed overnight at a Cracker Barrel. These are great places for overnight RV parking - you don't have to cook dinner, OR breakfast!

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Thursday, July 23, 2015

West Virginia And Newmar Kountry Club Rally

As we drive around here and visit the local restaurants we keep saying we've got to come back here when we have more time.

This area of West Virginia is gorgeous and there are bike trails and lakes to kayak in.

But we're here working this time. Our seminars are going great and we're doing one on one help desk sessions for smartphone users.

We're also having great fun with the new Google photos here's a little movie that it put together.

And, here's the video from Jim and his quadcopter. It shows the rally grounds from an aerial point of view, as well as the Fireworks show on the last night.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Let me tell you about the RV lifestyle and friends

Except for a weekend trip with the grandkids, our Motorhome has been parked since late May. It's now mid July and we're back on the road. Leaving Fort Lauderdale, Florida, our destination is Lewisburg, West Virginia for an RV Rally where we'll be doing our technology seminars.
Florida is a very long state, and you don't get all the way thru it in one day. We usually like to get north of Orlando on our first day of travel and we have a couple of standard spots where we've been before.

While checking into RVillage (a social network for RVers) we saw a notice from Curtis - a friend and the founder of RVillage - that he was having some work done on his RV and he was in Sanford, FL. Hey! That's just north of Orlando. I wonder if he's up for a visit? We exchanged a couple of messages on RVillage and planned to stay in the area for one night.

We hadn't been to Sanford before, so we consulted Allstays Camp and RV app on our phones and found a County park with a couple miles of where Curtis was getting his RV serviced. Perfect! We got in about 3:30 - just in time to settle in and go see Curtis in time for happy hour and dinner at some place in town.

We met Curtis last summer in Indiana, spent some time at Christmas with him in Arizona City, then again in Quartzsite, AZ. Partied with him at a rally in Pomona, CA in March and now here in Florida. That's how friendships amongst RVers go. You're as likely to see each other 3,000 miles away as around the corner.

As it turned out, the County Park we chose had a very nice trail the passed right by our campsite. It was in our Traillink App by the Rails to Trails conservancy - so we had to give it a try before we left the next day. Beautiful!

After the bike ride, we hit the road at our normal noonish timeframe and just drove for as long as was comfortable, then we checked our Passport America app for a 1/2 price park ahead. We found one in St. George, S.C. - pulled off the road, made some dinner and went to sleep.

Getting an earlier start the next day, we looked at the Passport America map and saw that there were pretty slim pickin's in the 2-300 mile range in the direction we were going, but the one in the right place was Mayberry RV park in Mt. Airy N.C. - that's where the Andy Griffith show was done. We'd stayed here before and knew it to be a very nice park. AND, my long-time friend Emily lives in the area. I wonder if she's home? I sent her a facebook message, and followed up with a phone call when we got parked. It went something like this, "Can we get together tonight?" Luckily we could!

We had a great dinner out and had the opportunity to catch up with a dear friend.

Such variety this RV lifestyle allows ... meeting up in new places with new friends, and catching up with old friends because you're in their neighborhood. And, quiet alone time in between.

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