| It’s
the dream you see it in magazines all the time: a man (or woman)
sitting on a park bench, laptop, well, in lap, effortlessly and
wirelessly surfing the web. That’s what we thought life would
be like on the open road. Armed with our laptops and cell phones,
we would be connected instantly everywhere. We didn’t have
to wait to retire to travel around, could live our mobilelifestyle
now.
Well,
let me tell you, that dream is exactly that. A dream. This is the
story of the technology nightmares and challenges that we have faced
on the road so far. As we’ve traveled and worked some of these
things out, we realized that we could possibly help others on their
quest for a mobile life.
First,
a bit of technical background. I’m sure that many of you have
heard all the talk about WiFi and Hot Spots that allow you to surf
the net wirelessly. A WiFi or Hot Spot is a location that has installed
a radio transmitter, which sends out a radio signal that can be
received by an wireless card installed in a computer. Usually the
Hot Spot signal has a range of about 30 feet. Some wireless networks,
as they are called, require a password, or if they are commercial
sites, they will require a credit card payment before granting access
to the network. Others are just there, and if you know how to detect
them, you can surf for free.
The leader in the commercial wireless world has been
T-Mobile through
their Starbuck’s
and Borders
Hot Spots.
On
with our story. Being that we were from San Francisco, one of the
most wired cities in the world, we, in our small-minded way, figured
that since all the Starbuck’s in San Francisco had wireless
internet access, we’d have no problem connecting to the web
when necessary from wherever we were. Our first trip out of San
Francisco in our rig was a two day trek up to Eugene, OR. We left
San Francisco on Sunday, March 15 and had to get to Eugene (and
to a Starbuck’s) by Monday afternoon, because Wally had some
large audio files to download before a conference call that afternoon.
This would be our first test of the mobile-lifestyle. Well, the
drive took a little longer than we thought, and at this point, we
did not yet have our towed vehicle. So we drove into downtown Eugene,
found a Starbuck’s and parked our 35’ RV nearby taking
up three parking meters (yes, we fed them all). We raced to the
Starbuck’s, Wally turned on his computer, and… and…there
was no signal.
No network within range. What the $%^&&*???  This
was Eugene! College town, cool place, lots of forward thinking people
lived here, so why wasn’t there a signal? Wally fought his
way up to the barista to find out what gives? The answer was something
we had not even thought of yet. You see, Eugene was not wired for
wireless yet, dude. Maybe in six months or a year the City will
run the cables required and Starbuck’s will install the Hot
Spot at some point after that. At some point??? The conference call
started in ten minutes!
"Sorry dude," the barista continued. "The University
may have it and you can sneak into the library sometimes and try
that." Sneak into the library. Not part of the
plan. No WiFi at Starbuck’s. Definitely not part of the
plan. We figured we’d run into this problem further on down
the road, but in Eugene? We were flunking our first test. This did
not look good. We got through
Eugene through the kindness of our friend’s DSL line at their
home. We made it through our first stop, Wally got what he needed
to get accomplished, but this wasn’t turning out like we planned.
First fix. We found out about a web site called
WiFinder.com.
 WiFinder.com
is a database of wireless access locations around the world. Participants
email updates, so we have found that the list is pretty accurate.
WiFinder.com lists every access point that it can, including commercial
locations (paid use), and even has listings for places like “Joe’s
apartment, NE corner of 3rd & Bryant.” We were thrilled.
At least now we had a way to locate the all important access points.
Our next stop
was Phoenix. Wally had some clients to see and I wanted to get the
hell out of the cold and rainy weather. Also, the tow vehicle that
we had purchased over the internet was in Phoenix and we had to
get that at some point (click here
to read about that saga). So we checked with WiFinder.com and
found lots of hot spots in Phoenix. We were psyched. We could spend
ten days in a nice hot place, fix up the rig and Wally and I could
work with ease. We looked for cool place to stay and found a lovely
park outside of Phoenix called Destiny
RV Resort. We had stayed at a Destiny park in Las Vegas and
liked it, so we figured we’d take a chance on this place.
If
you don’t know the Phoenix area, let me clue you into something.
It is really spread out. Like, really spread out. The greater Phoenix
area is now larger than the area of Los Angeles. At my last job
I did a lot of work in Phoenix, and we used to joke that in Phoenix,
down the street meant seven miles away. At least.
We settled into this nice park in Goodyear, AZ, and realized that
none of the WiFi hotspots were near the park. They did have a dial-up
modem in the office, so we could get email and get some work done.
Now, I had just left my job and was taking some time off, so my
internet needs were pretty simple. I just needed to be able to email
friends and family, do some research on our destinations on the
web and pay our bills online. Wally, on the other hand needed to
be able to check his email several times a day and had many large
audio files to upload and download. He would go to the office first
thing in the morning and wait in line for the one modem hookup behind
someone downloading pictures of the grandkids, and the person uploading
a week’s worth of eBay transactions to the bank. This was
not effencient. Plus, I think that Wally pacing around the convenience
store talking at top volume was not endearing us to the park staff.
But, this is what we had to do, so, we did it.
Finally, Wally got fed up. We had to find a high speed wireless
spot. He had to get some big files and the dial up kept dropping
out. We checked the map and found that we were not just miles away
from any of the hot spots, but MILES away.
Lesson #1: Check WiFinder.com
BEFORE booking an RV park.
Lesson #2: Call to check the location still has
WiFi after looking on WiFinder.com.
 We
drove out to the airport. The lounge in the American terminal was
listed as having wireless Internet access. We drove the 45 minutes
to the airport, parked, found the lounge, and, lo and behold, no
Internet access. None. We walked all over that place holding our
computers above our heads, waving them to and fro, but to no avail.
They had pulled the plug on the technology before it even had a
chance.
Next stop was a Wyndham Hill near the airport. We parked ourselves
in the lobby and opened our airports and found a connection! They
had a commercial provider of wireless internet access called Wayport.
Wayport charges around $10/day for wireless access, and a couple
of happy hours h’ors deuvres and drinks later, we had accomplished
our mission. But making a 45 minute commute (one way) to send a
few emails was not what we were thinking. Hey, weren’t we
supposed to be sitting on top of a mountain
and surfing the web?
What’s
interesting about wireless internet access is that people who live
in RV’s are some of the most reliant these days on internet
and cell phones to keep in touch with friends and family and also
conduct businesses. You would think that RV parks would be running
to provide this very cheap and profit making service for the parks.
But what we have found is that many parks are unfamiliar with the
technology, don’t understand the concept and, (as we found
in at least one park in Amarillo, TX), don’t even know that
they have it available in the park. Technology companies should
really be targeting this population of mobile-lifers, who could
really use these technologies, if they were targeted properly.
In any event, we are finding that there are more parks getting wirless
systems. But the reality is that the majority of parks do not have
high speed wireless internet access, and some major cities and towns
do not have any access points either.
Lesson #3: If you are going to live and work on
the road, plan your internet access ahead.
Lesson #4: If all else fails, find an alternative
We really were glad to have discovered an alternative to our desperate
need for wireless internet access. We had seen the commercials for
the Sprint
PCS card many times, but because it was being sold soley as
a business solution, so it just went right over our heads. Then
one day, when Wally was complaining about our plight to a colleague,
he mentioned that you can buy this card that plugs into your computer
and lets you access the internet through the Sprint network. What??
Really??
We ran out and bought one. And it worked. We could get on the internet
from most anywhere we had phone service (which was not too bad in
most places), but most importantly, when we were doing long all
day drives, Wally could be on conference calls and send emails all
at the same time, while I drove. Now we were living the mobile lifestyle.
We have one PC laptop and two Macs, so at first we could only access
the web through the PC. Wally finally figured out how to get the
card to work with his Mac, so he was set.I, however, did
not even have a slot for this magic card in my computer, so I was
still stuck.
I didn’t
think that it was really that big of a deal, but once your incorporate
this kind of technology into your life, and suddenly it’s
gone, it’s a bigger deal than you think. First of all, it’s
one thing to send emails back and forth with people daily, it’s
another thing to talk to people on the phone. Sending a quick note
and getting one back is a great way to keep contact with people,
because you don’t always want to call everyone all the
time. Not having that kind of contact all of a sudden, was really
adding to my feelings of isolation. Also, I do a lot of research
on the web. Suddenly, I didn’t have the ability to get the
answer to a question the minute I thought about it. This was particularly
frustrating, especially while we were traveling and I wanted to
research the places we were going to hit. What was I to do???
Lesson
#5: Get a cable.
 Wally
finally found a solution. Smith
Micro makes a cable that connects my cell phone to my computer
and allows me surf the web on the Sprint network. I don’t
have another phone number, I’m using the same minutes that
I have on my plan currently. Suddenly, I didn’t have to
shlep to the park office to get on the modem and check my email,
I didn’t have to beg Wally to let me use his computer, and
I didn’t have to save up all my emails and research questions
for days while I waited to get to a T-Mobile hotspot. I was, technologically-speaking,
free!! And you know, it made a huge difference to me. I realized
how much the internet and this type of communication is not just
part of my working life, but part of my life in general. I really
was having a hard time living without the internet, like it or
not.
Could a little thing like this really change our lives? The answer
is yes. Wally was really at a point of packing the RV away for
awhile. It was too hard to constantly be searching for Hot Spots
that half the time weren’t there. The main reason that we
thought we could live and work on the road, was because we thought
that between our cell phones and wireless internet access we could
always stay in touch. Plus walking around downtown Santa Fe holding
our computers up and waving them back and forth looking to hop
on someone else’s network, was really uncool and made a
lot of people stare. We still need to find a hot spot once in
awhile when we have large files to upload, but luckily those times
are fewer and far between.
Lesson
#6: If you can get a cable modem at a park, get it.
Currently we are spending a few months parked at the Malibu Beach
RV Park in Malibu, Calif. While we’re here, we had a cable
modem installed through the local cable company, so that is also
an option if you’re in one place for a period of time.
In terms of cell phone service, we both have Sprint PCS. It’s
worked for us pretty well. We’ve had decent coverage around
the country (so far) and since Wally, his partner and I all have
Sprint service, all our calls to each other are free. We both
have very generous monthly plans since these are our primary phone
numbers. You have to watch out that there is service in some of
the more remote parks, for instance, in Santa Fe, the Sprint service
ended about 100 yards from the park we were staying at, which
was only about 20 minutes from downtown Santa Fe. This was a big
drag, but Santa Fe is so nice, and we found a great local café
with wireless access so, we made do and ate well.
Lesson
#7: There are solutions out there, but they are not as
clear and easy to find as they should be. But, with the advances
that all these technologies are making, we do think that we will
be able to be sitting on top of that mountain surfing the web
one day soon.
Notes
from a techno-geek (but you can call him Wally if you want):
Wireless Data Networks: Sprint and Verizon sell
a PCM1A Card solution to connect a laptop to their wireless data
networks. < $200 plus usage charges $500 Integrated telephone
/ Palm or Pocket PC devices like the Samsung allow you to get email
and surf the web.
WiFi Hot Spots: A hot spot is where broadband access
is available through wireless technology (802.11a or 802.11g). All
you need is a a WiFi card (< $100) and you can join the networks
at thousands of locations around world. As long as you’re
within range of the signal (typically within a café, store
or hotel even yikes! McDonalds) you’ll be enjoying the benefits
of blazing fast broadband speeds with the freedom of wireless connectivity.
 “Free”
VideoPhone Calls! Using I-ChatAV and a firewire webcam,
we’re using our broadband access to connect to friends and
family with video and audio over the internet. Apple makes this
really easy (although there ARE PC solutions out there). So, If
one of us is traveling away from “home” on business
we can still “see” each other over coffee in the morning
by taking
our computers into Starbucks or wherever we have broadband access.
It’s so “Jetsons!" |
