I have been writing about my touring the Southern and Central, USA and about the jinx that I believe New Orleans is experiencing. Well, it is beginning to rub off on me, the black voodoo magic of New Orleans.
First, my net book crashed. All photos, all anecdotes, all written articles, poof! Out somewhere in cyberspace. Now, I have some computer savvy, and do not travel unprepared. So, I have brought computer recovery CD's but I need a portable CD drive. My visit to Best Buy yielded these results.
“$150 to diagnose the problem, sir,” said the techie, adding, “and no guarantees for the cost could increase depending what they do. $149 to use your recovery disks and do the installation for you.” I expressed my amazement at the high cost with no guarantees. Seeing an older man near to tears, the techie took some pity on me and said, “I have a tip for you. Buy a portable drive, $50 with a 15 day no questions asked return policy. So better for you to do the work yourself.”
I bought the drive and asked another techie to cut off the plastic extrusion in which the drive was packaged. Homeland Security should use this stuff at the borders where they have illegals sneaking into the country. The border would be impenetrable. As the extrusion is transparent, the scenic views would still be beautiful panoramas.
Well, I hooked up the drive to the net book, put in Disk 1, pressed enter and listened to the damn little drive whirl away without doing anything.
SCORE: New Orleans voodoo: 1, Szpin MOJO: 0
Next, as I am about to ride off, I try to key in my next destination into the GPS unit. Prompted for the state, I type out ‘Louisiana’ and the unit rejects it repeating the same request for a state name. A couple more attempts and poof, GPS unit crashes, and now is of no use. I am lost. The spaghetti jumble of roads in most American cities could be a horrendous puzzle, unsolvable while riding and trying to remember a memorized map layout. The maddening thing is that I just had the unit overhauled before this tour and the servicing company in Montreal company told me that I getting a new replacement unit as the old one was not reparable.
I remember the convoluted roadwork of Pittsburgh, they should rename it pretzel Pittsburgh-- for the roads around the downtown core are so twisted and twirled they would make a soft pretzel manufacturer proud enough to copy and duplicate the design on their products.
Computerless, I could not visit the GPS manufacturer’s web site. Using the hotel’s public computer, I got a toll free number so I would be able to phone the manufacturer the next day.
SCORE: New Orleans voodoo:2, Szpin MOJO: 0
Things were not looking up. But now came the next crash.
I like to check in with the “boss” nightly, or at each newly reached location. I picked up the hotel room phone, dialed 9-1-area code and home number only to be greeted with a surprising message that “This number is no longer in service.” I must have misdialed. I tried again, the message was repeated. I now figured I needed to try another dialing configuration. 9-0 should give me the operator. Shocking silence. I now resorted to a simple ‘0’ and the man from the hotel front desk answered.
“Oh, I was trying to get the operator.”
"I am the operator," the front desk clerk replied.
“No, no, the telephone operator. You know, the one who responds to dialing 0.”
“We don’t have such service here, sir,” came his surprising response.
“Look, I just want to phone my wife, back home in Canada,” I blurted out.
“Oh, that’s an overseas call, sir. You need to dial, 9-1011-area code and your number,” he explained as if talking to a pioneer who had never heard of a telephone device.
“Canada is just north of the USA, sir,” I explained rather hopelessly at this point.
Two failed attempts later, which I expected, I again called the front desk man about my most recent failures.
“I’ll come up to your room to help you, sir,” he replied making me feeling like a total incompetent.
A phone, for heaven’s sake. I have been using a phone for so long, I called Alexander Graham Bell, ‘Alex.’
The hotel desk clerk knocked on my door, upon entry, walked over to the phone and smugly dialed as he had told me too. Ha! He got the same results and I almost cheered except for the fact that I still had no phone use.
“I will have to call the manager and see what she can do about this,” he said, “meanwhile, I suggest you buy a phone card, sir.”
“How?” I asked rather glumly.
“On the Internet, sir.” he said. Oh man !
SCORE: New Orleans voodoo: 3, Szpin MOJO: 0
Meanwhile, I now remembered that I had a cell phone on the bike and began praying to the powers that be that the battery had enough power to make a short call. Now, let me tell you I have a system called ‘roaming’ on my phone. I have no idea what it means and have never made a call using it.
The cell phone beeped into life, and I dialed 1-area code-home number only to hear robotic voice announce “That number is not valid.” Not a good sign. I was about to collapse in tears right there in the parking lot but I am a determined sort and took one more stab at dialing but this time, I just dialed as if the number were a local call. Eureka, it worked!
“Hi boss, let me tell you the latest news….”
SCORE: New Orleans voodoo: 3, Szpin MOJO: 1
It is a wonder what a good night’s sleep can to do for brain cell recovery for the next morning I had an idea as to what I was doing wrong in trying to restore my computer to default settings as at first set up. Changing the boot sequence to boot from the portable drive was the answer. Less than an hour later, I was back to a working computer, but more importantly, I had an option to protect all my data which got backed up safely on the computer’s hard drive. Hooray!!!
SCORE: New Orleans voodoo: 3, Szpin MOJO: 2…now were talking !
Phone issue, resolved. Computer restoration, resolved. I was on a roll. Lunching in the hotel bar, I decided to ‘Skype’ phone the GPS manufacturer. This means using the computer to make the phone call. A couple of wrinkles not worth mentioning, and I finally connected with a GPS techie named Mike. Now, I am in a hotel bar talking to my net book as if it is an oversized phone, but it is all working. Then, Mike throws me a curve.
“Can you turn on the unit, sir?” he asks pleasantly.
“Not unless I have telekinesthetic powers," I replied. I explained I was talking to him via computer in a bar.
“Well, sir, you need to turn the unit on,” he persisted. I unplugged the computer power and now walked through the hotel lobby and atrium, all the while talking to my net book like some computer geek umbilically tied to his computer. I got to the bike. Luckily, the GPS can be powered up independent of the bike and it did so perfectly.
“Go to Tools, options, sir,” the techie said, adding, “How many maps do you see being used, sir?”
“Two, Mikee!” I replied, warming to the skill and confidence this techie was showing.
“Take out the MEXICO card, sir,” he instructed.
My reply was that I could only do this if I got a certain screw driver from my tool kit back in the room but then, an insight. Even us older riders have these on occasion. I thought removing the check mark in front of the MEXICO map would have the same effect as removing the card.
“Let’s try it again sir, try entering a state,” he directed. ‘Louisiana’…bingo, it worked. ‘Ontario’…bingo again.
SCORE: New Orleans voodoo: 3, Szpin MOJO: 3 … tied game !!!
Ok New Orleans…we are ready for the next voodoo challenge. I’m on a real roll and the Canadian MOJO is a match for ya !!
Visit back again!
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