I’m very lucky.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that, in the face of some challenges that we have, but then I sit back and think about all of the people that have told me that they wish they could be doing what we’re doing. And you know what? They’re not wrong!
We’ve had a marvelous last two weeks, punctuated by two interesting events, The Grey Water Flood and The Data Crisis.
First, I want to emphasize how wonderful this experience has been, generally speaking. We have had lots of family time, made some interesting road friends, and gotten to feel a level of freedom that a lot of people can’t imagine. We found a really cool campsite at Riverside Park in Victoria that was both inexpensive and had a wonderfully tree-filled disc golf course, meeting the needs of just about everybody. Zoe made friends with some carnival vendors that were staying there prior to their tour, and she helped out around their campsite so much that they gave her two turtles!
“There is nothing more expensive than a free pet” ~ Sensei
Luke and Leia are red-eared sliders, and despite their steep odds of survival, they are now part of the family. I have to admit that I was not initially excited about the idea of adding two more sets of needs to our already interesting list. These turtles, particularly at their young and vulnerable age, were not going to be making much of a contribution, from my perspective. But then, when you see your child’s face light up in that special way that you know means you have done the right thing, there is no better reward. As to their odds of survival, I quote Leia’s film husband, “Never tell me the odds!”
Our second week we spent in Live Oak Park in Ingleside, TX, and it’s the most awesome place EVER. If and when I do make another list of our favorite places, this one will definitely be at the top. First, they have TWO 18 hold disc golf courses, one of which is Championship rated. Secondly, they have two playgrounds, and lighted tennis courts. But the best thing of all: it was FREE. For five days a month, you can stay in a campsite with electricty and water hookups while spending absolutely zero dollars. For some perspective, the average Texas State Park will charge you $20 per night, and the private park that we stayed at just down the road from Live Oak was $38! On the meeting needs scale, this place hit homeruns. Aptly named, Live Oak Park was filled with trees. There were hooting owls at night, and soaring vultures during the day. I played so much disc golf that I got tired of it. Literally. I think I quit after 132 holes.
The only downside to this magical place was the lack of a dumping station, which led to The Grey Water Flood.
For those of you that don’t know anything about RV systems, all of the water that you use is captured into holding tanks. The “black” tank is toilet water, while the “grey” tank is everything else. We typically don’t stay in a place longer than a week, and often will dump our tanks after just three or four days, if the facilities are available. We thought that we were going to have the opportunity to dump at Live Oak (these are things that I typically scope out on the way in) but what we thought was a dump station turned out to be something else. Since we were planning on leaving after 5 days, we figured we would be ok. But my math was bad …
I’ll spare you the nasty details, but we did lose a couple of storage boxes that were in the shower stall where the grey water had overflowed. The realization that we were flooded prompted a swift exit from Live Oak and a late night run back to Victoria, where we knew there was 24-hour access to dumping facilities. Day saved!
Two days later we hit The Data Crisis.
For a little background: we are very heavy data users. When we were living in an apartment, we didn’t have cable TV, opting instead for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and YouTube. When we moved out, it was a challenge to try to stay connected. There didn’t seem to be any mobile plans available that weren't prohibitively expensive. But Needs Must Be Met. So we supplemented our 10Gb mobile data plan with trips to parks that had WiFi. One of the things that we discovered was that it is really difficult to find a park that actually has WiFi that is fast enough to watch streaming videos. It would seem that they are figuring on an audience that is more reliant on cable television and sattelite for their entertainment needs.
Then from the darkness came a light, and it was called KarmaGo. A fairly new company, offering an unlimited data plan, capped at 5Mbps for $50 per month. Seeing the awesome potential, we opted in for an entire year, paying up front for a 20% discount. It arrived just in time for Christmas, and Zoe could not have been happier. It actually freed us from having to stay in expensive WiFi enabled parks, which completely justified the $600 cost. We blew through 100 Gigabytes of data in the two weeks (which, if calculated against based on our phone plan, would have cost us $1350!) There were some minor inconveniences, such as only being able to log three devices in at a time, and no compatibility for the PlayStation, but in the big picture: we had good, fast internet.
The bait. The switch.
After those glorious weeks of amazing internet, we received an email from KarmaGo informing us that too many people were using the device for “unintended purposes.” They didn’t realize that offering unlimited data meant that people were going to be streaming Netflix, or backing up hard drives to the cloud. What planet do these people actually live on? So their solution was to throttle the speed down to 1.5Mbps, which actually still worked for us, albeit more frustratingly. About two weeks after that, we received ANOTHER email from them informing us of the NEW structure of the “unlimited” plan which was going to be 15Gb of high speed data, followed by an unlimited of data at 128kbps. Which basically means that we would have two days of normal use before the speed was too slow to do much of anything.
Cue the panic.
I know that we are lucky to live in a place that even HAS mobile internet, and there are whole regions of the country where you can’t get a cell signal, much less have google at your fingertips. But I purposely don’t go to those places, because I love my phone. I’m always on my phone. I’ve gotten in trouble at work for being on my phone too much. And if we had never had the KarmaGo, it probably would have been better than this four week tease. The worst feeling is the powerlessness, because you know the multi-billion dollar telecom corporations really don’t care about the little guy, and are trying to maximize profits instead of service. They know that we will pay lots of money for these phone plans, so they charge us lots of money for these phone plans. I’m disgusted, but an active participant.
Exercising my priveledge, I took out my frustrations on Twitter. KarmaGo, AT&T and Sprint all responded to my situation, with apologies, investigations, and temptation respectively. Essentially, KarmaGo said, “Sucks to be you, but you can have your money back, if you want.” AT&T promised to look into my “situation” which they then followed up with a retention call, offering steep discounts on their published plans. (Because they can afford to charge you less, but they don’t.) Sprint offered to make me happy with promises of unlimited data, and money to pay off our old plans.
We needed at least to get Zoe up and running immediately, so we went to the closest Sprint store to see what they were actually talking about. As it turns out, they were ready to give us a plan that worked out to unlimited data for all of us, plus new phones (!) for the cost of what we were paying AT&T and KarmaGo. We had only planned to do the one line, to sort of test the waters before giving up the AT&T yoke that I had born for over a decade, but Sprint offered even MORE money if we switched all three lines. I’m a sucker for a good upsell, so we took the plunge.
And now, I’m so happy! We all played with our new phones late into the night, personalizing, streaming, and enjoying the new freedom of not worrying about data consumption. Crisis averted!
Back to enjoying this very lucky life that we have.
