I wrote in yesterday’s blog that a cold front was going to bring high winds to northern Arizona, and that our trip to Flagstaff to get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal was going to be interesting.
The wind started blowing hard about three a.m., and all night long it slammed into our Winnebago. At 9 a.m. it was looking pretty grim, and I had a bad feeling about the trip to Flagstaff. Experience has taught me that sometimes I need to listen to that inner voice that warns me of things, and I told Miss Terry that we were going to sit tight for a while and see how things went. There was no sense in endangering ourselves, or getting caught on Interstate 40 if the Highway Patrol closed it.
Throughout the morning, we had rain, sleet, hail, and wind gusts up to 55 miles per hour. I called the newspaper in Flagstaff that does our printing, and the pressroom foreman said it was just as nasty there. Sure enough, just after noon, they closed Interstate 40 due to blowing dust and high winds, and the highway became a big parking lot the rest of the day. I’m sure glad we decided to wait it out!
About 4 p.m. the wind finally eased up, the sky started to clear a little bit, and I managed to take this picture of a rainbow over Juniper Ridge RV Resort.
A few minutes later and we had mostly blue sky and patchy clouds overhead.
The delay in picking up the paper won’t affect getting the new issue into the mail. We were supposed to stuff the envelopes and get them back to the mail service in Flagstaff Monday morning, and we can still meet that deadline. We’ll just have to push a little harder to get it done.
With our day’s travel plans changed, we just stayed home and relaxed. It was too cold and nasty to go anywhere anyway. I worked on my family tree on Ancestry.com, adding some newspaper birth and death notices that I found searching Google.
I also spent some time reading online reviews and news stories about the new Apple iPad. I wasn’t too impressed with this new gadget when I first heard about it, wondering what it could do that my laptop computer can’t. But after playing with a couple of them in stores, my thinking has changed 180 degrees. The iPad isn’t a computer, and it isn’t an iPhone or an iPod Touch. It’s an entirely different creation, incorporating some of the features of all of the above, and I can see dozens of uses for it, from cruising the internet to reading e-books and online newspapers, as well as using it for a GPS, and on and on.
The first generation models are WiFi only, but the new 3G units will be in stores the end of the month, and I am going to take a long, hard look at one when they become available. Have any of you blog readers acquired an iPad yet? I’d be interested in hearing your impressions of it.
While I was goofing off, Miss Terry caught up on her paperwork for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally and ran a couple loads of laundry, then started a new crochet project. All in all, it was a quiet day inside our motorhome, while the storm raged outside.
Today, if the weather cooperates, we’re headed to Flagstaff.
Thought For The Day – Okay, who stopped the payment on my reality check?
Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Here’s a review by an RVer of the iPad: http://wifisavvy.com/2010/04/17/is-the-ipad-an-rvers-accessory/
Nick, Run, do not walk, to an Apple Store and buy a 3G iPad when it comes out. In fact, buy 2 or Miss Terry and will steal yours! I bought the wifi model and have not opened my laptop computer since I brought the iPad home. When Betsy first saw it, she was not the least bit impressed. But on the second day I came out of the bathroom to find her playing with it. It took me three hours to get it back! The next day I bought a new one because she had purloined mine. The only drawback is that I wish we had waited for the 3G model because we are not always in a wifi area. For checking the internet and email it can’t be beat. Fast and easy. I used the mapping program here in Dallas and it works as good as my GPS. And the first time I read an ebook on the iPad, I new that my Kindle was history. The display is larger, brighter, and in color! Reading USA Today on it is fantastic. I put all of the music from my iPod on the new iPad and it just keeps getting better and better.
I got an ipad the day they came out as a birth gift for my daughter in law. She loves it and after using it for an hour I know why. I have a 3G 64 gig on order now. It is fast, easy and I have no doubt it will revolutionize computing as we know it.
Just got my iPad this past week. First impressions are that it is better then expected. My 83 year old mother is as anti-computer as they come, and she now wants one!