In Memphis and here in Tucumcari, the wifi networks are secured.  It requires a password, not just to use the network, but even to make a connection.  The message says “contact your network administrator.” That would be Jim.  He also had no luck.  I got up an hour early this morning (more on that later) and spent the time digging through my Network Administration class memories and (Thanks to Chet Cunningham for his excellent teaching) figured out how to get around the problem.  Hopefully, if we run into it again, I’ll be able to remember what I did without investing so much time.

So, my early rising is due to Blackberry.  Apparently, they think alarms are supposed to be a relative setting, not a literal one.  When the cell phone changed the system time to match the new time zone yesterday, it also changed the times on my alarms, so they are all going off an hour early.  Needless to say, I fixed the alarm clock immediately, but I couldn’t go back to sleep anyway.  Now I will have to go through my calendar and todo lists today and fix all my reminders, they are also going off an hour early.  What a pain.  This means, I’ll have to go through the same routine every time we cross a time zone.  Very poor design RIM.  Maybe there’s a setting someplace for telling it to STOP THAT.  That will be my preoccupation while Jim is driving today.

Aside from technical issues, we are having a blast.  There simply aren’t enough hours in the day though.  We let ourselves get side tracked so often yesterday that it took us 12 hours to get from Oklahoma City to Tucumcari.  According to Google, that should have been about a 5 and a half hour drive.  Finally, we had to reluctantly say, Enough, and force ourselves to drive past interesting photo ops.  That became easier once it got dark.  We plan to spend this morning checking out a couple of places here in Tucumcari.  (That’s such a fun name.  I love saying it.  It’s even fun to type.) There’s a dinosaur museum and an old camera shop.  The proprietor here at the Blue Swallow Motel, is a train buff  (Jim finds them all.) and he says there is a good rail yard also.  Then it is on to Albuquerque.

I have pictures.  Lots of pictures, there just hasn’t been time to edit them.  I promise to work on them in Albuquerque while Jim is hanging with his Air Force buddies.  Look for new posts to the albums in the next couple of days.