Wednesday, January 18, 2006
I now have the antennae
When I got up this morning I had no idea when the installer would arrive. He didn't come until after 15:30 & it only took about an hour.
But I should start earlier in the day. I needed to wash clothes so did that this morning. Most campgrounds have laundromats & this one is no exception, with two of them. The washers cost $1 per load, dryers 75 cents. I also got my holding tanks emptied, after going two weeks. They were not yet full, so I think I'll be fine in Quartzsite for 13 days, going there with empty tanks. My domesticated work continued when I washed most of the windows in the RV.
Today is Wed so it was the day for lunch at the RV park clubhouse - $2.50 for a cheese burger with potato chips & coffee. Then I made reservations for RV parks for the time after Life on Wheels in Tucson, covering Mar 18th to Apr 15th in Indio, CA. I talked with the folks in Yuma who I'll be renting space from for a month & I'll arrive there Feb 6th, driving down from Quartzsite. I will need to cover the time from Mar 6th to the start of Life on Wheels on the 14th. I need to find out when we can get into our parking spots on the college campus before the start of LoW but will be in the Tucson area. I will also need to cover the time from Apr 15th to home but will probably go to Escapees Escapade in Chico, CA on Apr 23 - 28. That should get me home in early May & by then the weather in the northwest should be pretty good.
Now back to the new antennae. When I hooked up the voice phone earlier I saw a 5-bar signal strength. But when I tried to place a call it still tried to connect, then after about 20 seconds I got the message that the call failed. I talked with the people at Verizon Wireless tonight & it sounds like this is just an area where their signal doesn't work well. To connect to their towers it has to connect in Nevada. From here in the RV park the local wireless provider has a stronger signal than the one from Verizon. This provider is also an extended service provider for Verizon. Perhaps this strange combination of "available" service providers confuses the phone enough that it just doesn't work well. I just talked with son, M, & it worked fine! Maybe that re-programing the Verizon people did, along with the stronger signal, has solved my problem! I will walk to a pay phone & send this Pocketmail update, then come back & try the card in the laptop.
