Going Back in Time — Remembering Our Beginnings — Chapter 1
The Internet started in 1983; AOL started in 1985; Wi-Fi started in 1997 for consumers.
(The picture of me in front of our house with my mobile desk set up. Circa April 2005)
When my husband and I first started thinking about living in other areas of the country and living in an RV, the internet was already out there, but WiFi-only started around 1997. That was the year we were married, which seemed fortuitous.
My husband, Sasha, and I had met at a party and had a great date the next day. He lived in Virginia and I lived with my parents in New Jersey. The only way we could communicate was through landline phone or email through AOL! We did not have cell phones or mobile connectivity like we do now.
I was looking through my old blog posts and writings, and one word constantly kept coming up. I talked and wrote about (wi-fi) bars.
We went across the country (from Virginia to Colorado) when we went to pick up our truck camper in 2005. We had a very unusual setup in our Ford F350 truck. I used it as my mobile office.
I had a heavy-duty Dell or HP laptop, with a Jotto desk that attached to the floor of the truck. As we went down the road, I had this laptop in front of me and a data card sticking out of the right side of the computer.
It is very old school now, and yet Jotto desks are still around. This was the set-up we had to get on the internet as we went across the country.
By 2005, I had a business called Sales Through Technology and had a cell phone. But you could not tether it to the computer. That type of ability hadn’t occurred yet. Or at least, I did not have it with my phone.
The equipment I had back then was a T-Mobile Sony Ericson card. So, when I was talking Bars or Internet Bars, there are between one and five bars when you look at the symbol on the laptop.
I could get onto the internet anywhere as long as there is a phone tower. It used the same speeds as DIAL-UP of 56 kilobytes per second! Therefore, the more bars, the faster the internet connection. It cost me $30 a month in 2005 dollars.
I had gone to New York to visit with a friend, and the hotel charged for Wi-Fi, at $10 a day, so that $30 a month seemed reasonable. And at 2021 prices, it still seems reasonable, but certainly not at the speeds. I do not think I could ever go back to dial-up now.
When we were going across the country, I would blog in relatively real-time, so that our family could go online and see where we were located for that day. Even on the first day, I was talking about whether we had any bars. It seemed like Maryland and West Virginia only had a few bars throughout the state.
One of the primary reasons we had a data card was to find diesel prices while driving down the road. We needed to find diesel as we had a Ford F350 truck. In the beginning, we had 35 gallons, but as soon as we went out west for our full-timing RVing adventures, we would buy an external diesel tank. But I am getting ahead of myself.
As we moved further away from the refineries of the east coast, the diesel prices would ultimately get to be more expensive. Yet in the beginning, going to a Flying J or truck stop, the diesel prices were very good for RVers. Later they would become evil. Again, I am getting ahead of myself.
Remember Cingular and AT&T Wireless?
My cell phone was on the Cingular network which was part of AT&T Wireless before 2004. Then Cingular took over AT&T Wireless, but AT&T did not stay out of the wireless system for long. It reacquired Cingular and became AT&T Mobility in 2007. It was during this time that I had a Cingular cell phone, very different looking, a precursor to a smartphone.
Our Truck
The truck we had back then got 15 miles to the gallon on the highway. It seems so low now, but back then, it was considered a high mileage truck. We could go about 500 plus miles on one tank of gas. Well, IF the winds were low, the road was flat and there was no traffic on the road at all.
To be continued… Next up, a log of the first day traveling on Interstate 70, back in 2005.
