After the long hours and hectic schedule of the rally and the weeks leading up to it, it sure was good to sleep in yesterday! When Terry and I did wake up, we just laid in bed for another hour or more cuddling and talking, just enjoying our time together. We need this time to unwind.
Eventually we got up and Terry started working on the big pile of laundry that had accumulated during the rally while I began answering e-mails that I didn’t have time to deal with during rally week. Though we were busy with those chores, it was nice not to have to go anywhere or do anything for a while.
Sometime around noon I walked over to Greg and Jan’s motorhome and visited with them for a little bit and we talked about the rally, what we did right, but could’ve done better, and things we might implement for future rallies. Overall the feedback we got was very good and once I finish reading through all the forms I’ll share some of it with you. Thanks again to everyone who came to the rally, all of the volunteers who work so hard to make it a success, and to our hard-working advance crew; Tom and Barbara, Greg and Jan, and Mike and Elaine. What would we do without you?
I heard a lot of comments at the rally from folks who have Verizon MiFi cards, and the overall consensus seems to be that they are garbage. I have yet to meet anyone out here on the road who is satisfied with the devices, and more and more people I talk to are completely discouraged with Verizon’s service. At one time they were the best choice for fulltime RVers but those days seem to be gone. We spent a couple of days in the Foothills area of Yuma after the rally, where we had full bars of service on our phones and air cards, but most of that time, while the phones worked fine, data service was atrocious. If there are a lot of people using the same towers, it doesn’t matter how strong your signal is, your speed is going to be terrible. Here is an interesting blog, one of many I have read, complaining about the Verizon MiFi and Verizon’s service in general http://rsanityrvtravels.blogspot.com/.
About 2 PM we drove over to my cousin Beverly’s apartment and spent a couple of hours visiting with her. I always love getting together with Beverly, she is one of my favorite people in the whole world. A little before 5 o’clock we drove to Lucky Wishbone, which is a local favorite where we always eat at least one time when we visit Tucson. Greg and Jan met us there and we had a nice time chatting while we ate. Then we all went back to Beverly’s house for a while, and Greg spent a couple of hours cleaning up her laptop computer and installing some updates. It’s great to have a computer guru in the family who works for free. 🙂
I have to brag a little bit. Since I released my first mystery, Big Lake, on the Amazon Kindle bookstore on May 22, 2011 it has sold over 103,000 copies. Nobody is more surprised than me by the book’s success, and I appreciate all of you who bought it, left reviews, and told your friends about Big Lake. The sequel, Big Lake Lynching, is also selling well, and now that the rally is behind us I can concentrate on book three in the series, tentatively titled Crazy Days in Big Lake. I’ve only got one chapter done so far but I hope to release it by late spring or early summer.
Thought For The Day – By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
I don’t really work for free.
I just haven’t given you my bill yet.
Nick looking forward to your review of the Tire Tracker system. I had a Doran and let it go when I sold the Itasca. I’m on the fence trying to decide between the Tire Tracker and the Pressure Pros for the new motorhome.
Try the Verizon air card! I tried the mi-fi, and gave up on it after a couple weeks. The air card is not as fast as the mi-fi, but it WORKS! I’ve had a Verizon air card for years and loved it. It was slow, but soooooo reliable! The newer one is faster, and still just as reliable. We travel in a motorhome throughout the midwest and south ( however, no experience out west) and I LOVE MY VERIZON AIR CARD! Great service, too. Also, just got an iPhone from Verizon, and the personal help has been terrific, both over the phone with tech, and in person at Verizon stores. I LOVE VERIZON!
We have had Verizon phone service and MiFi forever and are one of the ones who swear by it not swear at it. We live on our MiFi and now with our IPhone we are never without service. There have been a few areas in our years of travel that were bad, but that was years ago and whenever we return to those places we have better service now.
We continue to research so whenever we are in a location and see somebody having a hard time with their service and we ask which carrier they are with, it is never Verizon…always one of the other guys. But that has been our experience and we understand that everybody has their own.
Just an FYI…we remain with the 3G, never upgraded to 4G and may not since this seems to be a major issue.
A few years ago when we still had our S & B house we went to the Mi-Fi. After three weeks we went back to the air card with the usb port. Eventually got a router so we both be on the air at the same time and it “Usually works pretty good. We are still in the Foothills of Yuma and it is spotty. Maybe a booster will help?
As you know we have Verizon both phone and air card, we have had good areas were we got great reception then again we have been in areas including now our home base that service really sucks, right now here in Yuma the phone is great but our air card is not, we have very slow service. We did buy a booster for the phone for when we are in these poor areas and sure hope it works. Glad to hear you are both taking it easy. stay safe
We stayed with the Verizon 3G air card with antenna plug on the side. Now and then I have to use the portable antenna and have been amazed at the places that I have service. I think it will be a few more years before 4G is up to the standard that I want.
I was going to recommend Verizon MiFi to my son & DIL when they move to their acreage if they can’t get Telebeep, but after all the negative comments about Verizon service lately maybe I won’t. Sure don’t want them stuck in some contract with crappy service.
I’ve read both your books and enjoyed them. Not to be nit picky, and I’m sure it’s already been pointed out to you, some of the characters’ names were mixed up in a couple places. It didn’t ruin the story for me, but caused momentary confusion.
I am upgrading computers in may and since I have the old wide slot Verizon Air Card that still works wonderfully well, I’m really hesitant on which way to go…had almost decided on the mifi…… so much wanting to just have them build my computer with the slot and forget the upgrade. I’m still on the unlimited plan too….and unless I change something, I think that will remain. We are going to Washington and Oregon this summer and have already decided I may be using Onstar minutes and wifi some too. Time will tell. I have never really had a bad experience with Verizon! (knock on wood)
Nick,
I know you did a couple of seminars on e-books at your rally last week, but have you ever considered a short one or two day rally or workshop focused just on e-books and e-book publishing? I bet a lot of RVers would love it and it would be much less work than a full Gypsy Journal rally.
The problem IS the 4G service. When it first came out app. 16 months ago, I switched and within 2 weeks, switched back to 3G due to numerous problems. I never had problems with 3G before or after the switch and to this day, I am still a Verizon fan for the extended/fulltime traveler using 3G service! It just plain works most everywhere.
If Greg is with you still tell him I tried to read his blog tonight and could not get on it. Great Rally looking forward to next year. We would meet up with you in the east put will be on a caravan.
Ditto about Greg’s blog. Tried several times today. Have him send a message via your blog.
Thanks.
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