Our Nest on Wheels

Most of us have become accustomed to having high speed internet access in our homes. So much of what we do now involves a connection to the internet. We, like many of you, have "cut the cord" to our cable TV and now use the cable company only for internet access; we stream most of our video entertainment from Netflix, Roku, or SlingTV, and we use over-the-air TV for things like the local new broadcast. And of course we'll be communicating via email, looking up new locations on google maps, paying bills and doing banking online. This means that a reliable internet connection while traveling in a motorhome is a need, not a want.


So, how do you do it? As it turns out, the cable company is unwilling to provide a hardwired connection to a moving vehicle. Who knew? The same is true for ATT DSL or U-verse. And satellite internet, which can be useful for remote locations where cable isn't available, does not really work for the mobile community, as the setup is specific to your geographic location.

So most RVers use a combination of a couple of types of access—typically campground-provided Wi-Fi and a cellular "hotspot" or MiFi device. We will do that also, but with an added component to make life easier. As you can imagine, setting up your PC, smartphone, tablets, etc., to use every different Wi-Fi setup you use as you travel would be a pain. And then switching them over to your MiFi device when Wi-Fi doesn't work would be another pain. But there is a class of routers that is made just for this type of setup.

The type of router that we will get can use a cellular hotspot (or MiFi) as the internet connection and then create a local network within the motorhome for all our devices to connect to. So far this is very much similar to a cable internet connection in a house, except that the internet part is via a cellular hotspot. But the added feature that these routers have is the ability to create their internet connection via available Wi-Fi. This is called Wi-Fi as WAN, or WAW. And the router is smart enough to use the Wi-Fi connection first; it will switch over to the more expensive cellular connection only if the Wi-Fi isn't very good. The benefit of this is that we should never need to change the connection on our devices (PC, tablets, smartphones, etc.). They just connect to our local network, and the router takes care of the rest. If the camp Wi-Fi isn't very strong, we can add an antenna and pull in the signal from a long distance away, sometimes as far as half a mile.

So, that's the plan. We'll see how it plays out and how well it works. But there are a lot of people who do work online and travel full-time in their RV, so we know that it can be done . . . for a price.  More on that later.

True confession: For a while I was embarrassed to tell people that we were thinking of getting an RV. And especially that we want to take that RV somewhere warm in the winter. It's just so . . . cliché. 

Worse: it's old-people cliché.  

And to be honest, one of my apprehensions about embarking on this new adventure has been what it will be like spending so much time among retirees. (Steve would tell you it is a misconception that most RV-ers are retirees, and he's probably right—have I mentioned how good he is at research?—but he's not writing this post.) (Also, I have nothing against retirees; some of my best friends are retired. [You know who you are.] I didn't say it was a rational apprehension, okay?)

Then last Friday we went to hear Shindig, a 60's tribute band that a couple of Steve's friends play in. They have quite a following of people who were teenagers when 60's music was first played—a lot of younger fans, too, but definitely a good part of the crowd was what you'd call retirement age. And they're really fun! Some of them have a little less hair and a few more pounds than they probably had in the Age of Aquarius, but that didn't slow them down on the dance floor. It was pretty easy to see that most people there feel the same way I do: young and eager for life but inexplicably wearing a middle-aged body.

Tetons, 1981—about to head into the back country on our first backpacking trip together

And you know what? I feel kind of shallow and narcissistic saying this, but when everybody is a little heavier or balder or more wrinkly than the "ideal" man or woman as portrayed by Western media, when pretty much everyone has gotten past the age when you compare your looks to other people's and worry about how you measure up—well, things are a lot more relaxed.

I know: a truly well-adjusted person doesn't compare herself to others at any age, and a truly well-adjusted person doesn't have to think about whether she measures up to some external standard. I know one person like that. [You know who you are.] It's not me. Big surprise.

So Friday night's dinner-and-a-band date turned out to be a minor epiphany. If we end up in RV parks with a lot of retirees, it's going to be fine. Maybe even better than fine. Because a whole lot of the people who have chosen to travel rather than stay put are probably a lot like us: past our prime on the outside, but ageless on the inside.

2014, after completing a rim-to-rim backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon

And considering the alternative, I'm pretty happy to be getting older.