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We departed Vegas a week ago for Mesa, AZ to attend a book selling event.
Arizona was nice, it was good to hang out with Damian and Apple as well as see people at the convention – but the convention itself was a bit lackluster compared to prior years…
Green Acres RV Park was nice, but tight. Every available space was filled.
We’re now in a lovely RV Park in Palm Springs, California bringing our trip to twenty-eight states visited so far.
We’ve been back in Vegas for nine days and have cleaned and refilled the Airstream for travel again. Today we depart for Phoenix to attend a convention and hopefully sell some books. After that we’re heading up the pacific coast for my day job, then back to Vegas.
Once back in Vegas for a few days the travel continues, but by plane. While Sean will be heading to Minnesota, I’ll be heading to Boston. Then we both meet up for two weeks in Vegas as friends come to visit before heading out to Chicago in December.
It’s going to be a crazy couple of weeks.
7734 Miles…
28 States…
That what the trip planner is telling me and what the map shows after adding a convention for the comic store and a training for my day job…
Given that there is now snow falling in Denver and more on the mountains we’ve decided to change course and head south through Oklahoma and Texas to get back to Vegas.
Our plan is to get back to Vegas sometime in the middle of next week, do maintenance, and hit the road bound for Phoenix, Palm Springs, Fresno, Delano, and maybe some travel to Portland, OR…
Today we left the Airstream Campus and made our way south to King’s Island for a day of roller coasters, fried food, and fun!
It was all of that and more.
After that it was time to hit the road, leave Ohio, and make camp just outside of Indianapolis. The KOA is amazingly nice!
Now to cook dinner and relax!
So today we pulled into the Airstream Factory to have some fit and finish warranty work done. They did everything I asked them except for one vent and one window. We’ll have the local dealership tend to those when we get back.
The factory is huge!
Tomorrow we are taking the Factor Tour to see what goes into building one of these units. I’m looking forward to it!
TLDR: No damage
So since we’re talking about Plan B situations on our coast to coast journey, let’s discuss network connectivity. Doing the digital nomad thing is great as long as you can connect to the rest of the world. For my first attempt, I failed twice with the Netgear Nighthawk M1 Mobile Hotspot Router. (TLDR spoilers: Amazon link here but who cares because it’s crap and don’t buy it.)
The fail started pretty fast even before we left. The idea with this router is you take any ol’ SIM card with a data plan (in my case, liberated from Fox’s iPad Pro 1st gen, an AT&T legacy unlimited plan, mmmmm….), drop it in the device, set up a little hotspot with the web page or app, voila. Instant internet anywhere.
What I got instead was a failure to charge the battery because the device was too hot. In Las Vegas. At 85º F. WTF. So this device wasn’t going to be the long term live in the Airstream and enjoy the multitude of USB charger ports available. Okay.
Next failure – The critical role of a hotspot is to BE A HOTSPOT. This one didn’t. After a little while of being turned on, it just decided…. nah man, we coo. It didn’t shut off, it just stoped providing any sort of connections. Not for lack of signal, the SSID just wouldn’t appear to any devices. You’d need to hard reboot the device with a battery removal to get the thing to respond anymore.
So, maybe just a bad unit, right? Swappy swappy time with Amazon. New unit arrives via Amazon Prime to my delusional uncle’s house who doesn’t understand why Trump is sending him random packages with license plates and electronics even though the label clearly says FOR SEAN on it…. ANYWAY. New boss, same as the old boss.
Maybe it was just losing AT&T (more bahs in more places…), and I needed a better antenna? Oh, Amazon. Your Netgear MIMO antenna in “retail packaging” was TWICE sent as a display model with clearly noted on the packaging that it was not for sale.
Plan B
So, buh bye went the Netgear. And I found https://mofinetwork.com on Amazon instead. This is NOT a simple router. This appears to be a full linux install in a small ruggedized box with metal enclosure, two cell antennas, two 2.4GHz antennas, and a sweet 12 volt adapter with a fuse tap for always on network. Now have successfully done multiple meetings from I-95 from the truck (where the router is a good 35′ away while driving down the highway). This one has been a winner so far.
After a lovely time with my mother we are back on the road. As of today we have visited 21 states (see map below) and still have a few more to go along the route home.
Tomorrow we are pushing towards the Airstream Factory to not only take a factory tour (as we did at The Rouge where our F150 was built) but to make an appointment for some warranty repair work. We are dipping down so that we cross into Virginia and West Virginia before entering Ohio.
After our appointment and tour we’ll be heading over to King’s Dominion to visit the third Cedar Fair park of the trip (fifth of the year, that Season Pass is getting it’s workout this year). Then it’s onto visit a friend in Saint Louis, another in the greater Kansas City, MO are, then off to the biggest ball of Twine in the country.
After twine ball number two, we’ll either visit friends in Denver, or cut down directly to Santa Fe, it’s still up in the air…