Hanging around Elkhart

We’ve been hanging out in Elkhart, IN ever since the Escapade let out on the 17th at Elkhart Campground. Between the DOVES hosting Red Cross training classes, Nick Russell of the awesome Gypsy Journal offering his Self Publishing workshop and bunches of friends – who could resist?

It’s been non-stop events, social gatherings, deepening of friendships and cramming in work hours. Our friends Jim & Chris Guld of the Geeks on Tour made a great post that wraps up a lot of the social events that have been going on.

We’ve also been parked next to our ‘boss’ Curtis Coleman, which has been a lot of fun. While we’ve talked on video chat almost daily during the launch of RVillage, it was great to get some more casual in person time together.

Medical ‘Fun’

But aside from all this fun, we also had some medical chores to attend to.  Chris has been having some symptoms we wanted to further check out – and we had a good idea of what kind of specialist he needed to see.

But it’s not that easy – we had to navigate the healthcare system in a city we had no connections and wouldn’t be around too long – and without having a primary care physician. We’ve tried multiple times over the years to establish ourselves with a primary care doc, but it always ends in frustration. Either not being able to get in as a new patient when we know we’ll be in one area for a while, or once we do get established our new doctor soon after quits their practice.

Supposedly, our high deductible health insurance plan doesn’t require a referral to see a specialist.  But after calling around to a few docs in the area and even using our insurance plan’s health concierge service, none of them would see Chris without a referral.  Thankfully, a referral from an urgent care center would get him in the door – so off we went.

Sure enough, 15 minutes later we were referred to a specialist in the area for exactly the procedure we thought was the next step.

We are very thankful that once we got to talking to nurses and doctors and explaining we’re full time RVers just passing through town – we got immediate appointments for everything needed. There are some advantages to being in the RV center of the US – we didn’t have to explain RVing to anyone!

And by the end of the week Chris had been cleared of having anything of concern. Which was a huge relief and worth the frustration.  (Click here for our article on Healthcare for RVers.)

Unfortunately, the time spent roaming around town for appointments and procedures meant we had to pull out of several of the DOVES training classes we’ll need to be deployable for disaster operations. We’ll catch up with those down the road.

But we did attend Nick’s workshop, which was of particular interest to us as we seem to have wandered into self-publishing.  Nick’s introduction was rather amusing, in which he says there are ‘gifty’ publishers who aren’t motivated to take money for their art & contributions… and then there are whores, who are all in it for the money.

Nick is proudly a self-proclaimed whore. We’ve been a bit more on the artsy gifty side, and needing a little encouragement to not be bashful about asking for support in delivering our content to those who can benefit.

So the workshop was very helpful to us in discovering our unique blend of sharing great content while keeping Kiki fed.

The Mobile Internet Handbook Campaign Progress

And on that subject.. we’ve been overwhelming thrilled with how much you all have supported our latest endeavor – the Indiegogo Campaign for our re-write of ‘The Mobile Internet Handbook’. We never in our wildest dreams thought we’d get this much support!

Thus far, we have 173 supporters contributing just over $6000!

You’ve helped us meet 4 stretch goals – each of which is a brand new chapter in the book. We’ll be gearing up to write a basic glossary explaining all the components, installation tips & hints, frequencies explained and now a special guest chapter by RV tech guru Jack Mayer on Antennas & Mounting Techniques. We’re going to be focused on writing for the month of June!

Jack has also honored us by offering to hang out in our premium membership forums as another expert voice to help out!  Which is much appreciated, especially since we have over 50 folks signed up for the program already!

In return, we’re going to help him turn some of his content on “Building a WiFi Capture Device” into a smaller eBook on its own. And everyone who has signed up for our new premium membership service will get a copy! 

We still have a week left on the campaign – and our next stretch goal will fund us having a super awesome T-shirt design made. This won’t be a marketing shirt for the book or us, but rather something we hope anyone who is mobile & connected would think cool to wear.

All ‘Full Supporters’ will get this shirt included in their perk package automatically, and since we’re pretty sure we’ll meet our next stretch goal we’ve added a new ‘Mobile Enthusiast Package’ level that includes the full autographed book package, premium membership, a Technomadia photo card and one of these T-shirts!  (We’ll also be setting up a way to order the shirt ala carte too!)

Can you help?  From pre-purchasing your copy of the book… to joining our new membership service! We’re honored by every contribution!

 

Whew… looking back, it was a busy week .. somehow amongst all this we managed to host not just one, but two, live video chats.  One on Mobile Internet Options for RVers and another a Q&A Session with RVillage’s Founder – the links go to archives if you’d like to watch.

 

What’s Next?  We’re still in the Elkhart area, hopping around to various RV service centers getting some overdue bus projects done before we leave RV-mecca. Our Facebook followers got to follow along with yesterday’s adventure in having new seats installed!  We’ll follow-up with the full story soon. We may be here another couple days, and then we’ll figure out where next.