One of the very best things about wandering around on a gizmological marvel with lots of media coverage is that the machine becomes a key that opens doors of all descriptions. I briefly shared orbits with people I would never have otherwise met, and some such encounters spawned journalistic spin-offs… like this one. Joe Ely…

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I was heading into the real mountains now, after warming up a bit with New Mexico. Other than a scary guy who harassed me on the road north, I was beginning what came to be known as the “third trimester” of the journey… slowing down to savor the warmth of humans and the rugged beauty…

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Computing Across America, chapter 37 by Steven K. Roberts Santa Fe, New Mexico August 10, 1984 You came saying “show me who you are”; the tourists came saying “show us what you got.” Steve Northup, Time Magazine The shape of the northern horizon kept changing, the storms and mountains sparring with lightning punches as I…

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Partying Goes Online for Cyclist - USA Today

Boy, does this one ever take me back… to the salad days of the emerging CompuServe culture that congealed around the “CB Simulator.” The quality of discourse was rich then, with a number of effective filters in place (only 140,000 subscribers to this largest of the online services) and considerable self-examination (“What does this mean?…

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Popular Computing - High-Tech Nomad - page 1

This was one of the first substantial articles detailing my newly minted technomadic lifestyle, and it was enriched considerably by excellent photos. The piece ran 7 pages in what was then a high-profile personal-computing magazine, and laid out many of the defining principles of life as a paleo-technomad. For context, it’s worth remembering that back…

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The author of this story, Carole Gerber, also wrote the first article about my adventures… breaking the story in an Online Today piece called “Computing Across America.” A few thousand miles down the road, she got in touch again via CompuServe. Family Computing evolved over the years from this platform-agnostic publication featuring games and learning,…

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I had a very enjoyable visit in Slidell, Louisiana in mid-April of 1984, leading to stories in the Daily Sentry-News as well as shorter pieces in the St. Tammany Times and Times-Picayune. My host, David Smith, gave me a tour of the National Weather Service office… resulting in this piece in my Online Today series…

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This was the first national TV coverage of my Computing Across America adventure, and it is still the one, after all these years and hundreds of shows, that most takes me back to the real feel of the road. CBS Morning News production standards were flawless, and they only used audio from the scene (nothing…

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I found Santa Fe fascinating and stayed about three weeks before heading north to Colorado. Caption of the photo above: Steve Roberts of Columbus, Ohio, finishes a lap around the Plaza after arriving in Santa Fe on his custom-made, 18-speed bike outfitted with solar panels and a computer. Roberts plans to stay in Santa Fe…

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After the cover story of July 5, 1984, this was the first of my columns in the Money section of USA Today, which ran every other week until mid-November (when I hunkered down to write Computing Across America). This would have been awesome PR for said book, but I got caught up in editorial musical…

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