A few notes from the netbook… yes indeed, I elected to take advantage of the Memorial Day weekend to jump in the car and head west… northwest to be exact. Thus, you can expect the news, tweets, newsletters, etc… to come at you from north of the 49th for a bit – excuse the occasional “eh” and “aboooot”! Some things learned so far from the trip:
- It is possible to leave N Colorado bar car on a Sunday morning and be in Seattle by 3 PM the following day… even with a dog in tow!
- Mobile connectivity in Wyoming is a treat and likely only possible when you happen to be within earshot (or line of sight) of one of the 3 towers that are apparently in the State!
- Access to mobile apps (like gmaps, mobile navigation, waze, foursquare etc…) will likely never work for you when you really need them
- I-84 West of Boise, Idaho is a great place to find a State Trooper
- The Eagles (think Hotel California) are on tour once again… what happened to “The Hell Freezes Over tour”??
- amazingly, as soon as you encounter the Oregon border, the skies will turn gray and the rain will come
- When dealing with border security, never ever say anything unless you are spoken to and then keep it at one or two words. Nothing good will ever come from anything else.
- The second you cross the Canada/USA border you will no longer have access to your T-Mobile or AT&T mobile data.
- Free, open, and accessible WiFi is apparently a luxury in Canada
- Once you cross into BC and send out a tweet, you will almost immediately be greeted by a number of BC-based Geogeeks… cheers!
- valuable iPhone apps for the road warrior definitely were: waze, foursquare, WHERE, INRIX, Google maps mobile, Tvider, and Pegshot
- Regardless of technical glitches (mostly carrier related) social location aware applications are truly valuable for the road warrior and offer users security and peace of mind when they need it (mostly)
