It’s been hard to stay occupied while riding from Michigan to Florida.

I’m accustomed to co-piloting with the use of my GPS, which runs through my laptop. Since starting these long trips, I’ve always been able to go on line, using a connection through my cellphone to my computer. But this time, with none of that to keep me busy, this trip has been longer and more boring.

I had thought for sure that I could restore my old computer to the point that I could get on line with it. I hoped for the cellphone internet connection, but I quickly discovered that wasn’t going to happen.

I still thought I had myself covered for at least a daily check in. I’d booked a business king room for the first motel (Thursday night) so it had internet. I was even successful connecting but only one time. After that I couldn’t get the computer to recognize the network. Hopefully it was the motel’s system problem, and not my computer. I should have used the motel’s computer lounge, but I was already ready for bed when I discovered the problem, so I thought I’d wait until Friday (last) night.

Unfortunately last night’s motel had no public terminal and subscribing for one night’s T-Mobile service would have cost $9.95, which may have been wasted if making an internet connection wasn’t possible, so I didn’t try.

Our Vonage phone (which serves us both in Florida and in Michigan) is also messed up. When my computer was dying, I had changed the setting but I did it incorrectly (that’s what I get for hurrying) The way it’s set up, instead of being forwarded to voice mail, when someone calls our regular phone line, they get an operator asking for the pin number. At least folks aren’t leaving messages. Very few folks have our cell phone number since generally I can have our phone forwarded to our cellphone.

At least I know that, as soon as I have internet access, I can fix that problem. We’ll have both our Saginaw and our Florida phone lines with unlimited calling.

By cellphone, I was able to contact Mom’s nursing home and Mom’s caregiver to give them our cell number. No one has called so I assume no news is good news.

Hopefully I will be able to get on line using my old computer from the condo. If not, I can make trips to the club house until my new computer arrives mid-week. .

I haven’t been able to retrieve any email since Wednesday. There’s no way to know if I’ve missed sales contacts or not.

So I’m riding along. I have Word, Excel, and Lotus installed on my old computer. I’m using the word processor to type this in hopes of eventually up-loading it to my blog.

Fifty miles and we’ll be at the Georgia/Florida border.

Hurricane Ike has really played havoc with gas prices. The lowest we’ve paid has been $3.80 Thursday, but we’re seeing much higher prices today in the mid $4 range.