iPhone 6 Quest: Day 15

Day 16

Today we got transferred into the cage. This will be our last night here and we expect it to be the coldest yet. No rain, though.

This is how we woke up 🙂

The people from the NYPD came early this morning to help the Apple staff build the cage. We went inside at about 3pm in groups of five. We could feel that in only a few hours the quest was going to be done.

We were surprised to see that most of the people in line were Chinese. We asked around why and we found out that the release of the iPhone 6 and 6+ in China has been delayed until December or probably January 2015; therefore, right now an iPhone 6 over there is worth around $4000USD. That’s when we understood that most of those people were resellers. Most of them were old women or men with children.

All Chinatown came to line up for the iPhone 6

Up to a couple minutes ago, the line went all the way to 63th ST, that’s 5 blocks away. CRAZY! The media will get here early in the morning. Follow our twitter account for more info!

Time to sleep, at least for a few hours.

The RAVPower Team is READY!

Cheers!

ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 14

Day 14

Just two more nights to go. Tomorrow they will transfer us to “the cage”, the final line where we will spend our last night together. It has been a long journey but we are finally here.

The team having lunch!

Everything went smoothly today. A few interviews, but the real deal will begin tomorrow night. We can almost smell the plastic cover of the new iPhone 6!

Tonight we all had dinner together and talked about everything that has happened. It was a fun night. It’s strange to think that we will soon have to go back to our normal lives. Don’t get me wrong, we really miss our beds, but we will miss the people we’ve met in line. We will miss all of them.

This is our last night on our comfy chairs. Tomorrow they will be taken away just before we move to the cage.

Good night!

Cheers!

ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 13

Day 13 (sorry guys, somehow we were unable to publish this post last night)

The clouds over us!

The weather forecast said it would only be 40% chance of rain during the morning, but we did not expect it to wake us up at 730am. It poured for more than 4 hours. We did all we could to save our gear, but many of our things got wet. And to make things worst, the wind was cold, almost freezing.

The team staying positive, even though it was raining! 🙂

We covered our already wet gear with the tarp and ran to the cafe around the corner to wait for the rain to stop. We stayed there drinking hot tea and taking turns every 20 minutes to go to the camp site and check on our stuff.

After 12pm, the clouds began to disperse. We were finally able to return to our stuff and, after the sun came out, we opened our sleeping bags and our luggage to dry under the sunshine.

Right now, we are wrapped in our sleeping bags like human burritos. We’ll try to stay warm and safe.

Don’t forget to participate on our global iPhone 6 event! You can get one for free from RAVPower! All you have to do is go to http://www.ravpower.com!

Good night!

3 more nights to go!

Cheers!

ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 12

Day 12

Only 3 days left in this quest! Can’t believe we’re almost there. The days are getting shorter and the weather, well… crazier everyday. It usually begins with a very cold morning followed by a sunny and hot afternoon. Ending, of course, in a strangely chilly night that eventually turns into another cold autumn morning. No wonder why my throat is starting to hurt again.

Hey! He's cutting in line! :p

But let’s talk about today’s great news…

Today we officially launch the RAVPower iPhone 6 global contest! Want a FREE iPhone 6 Plus but missed the preorder and now have to wait months before you can get your hands on one? Well, don’t look any further. RAVPower has one for you! It’s simple. Go to www.ravpower.com, click on the banner on the front page and follow the instructions. It’s that simple!

If you do not have an iPhone 6 or any RAVPower product, simply write in a piece of paper “I Love RAVPower”, take a picture of you holding the sign and upload it to your Twitter or Instagram and tag us @RAVPower. You can also post it on our Facebook page.

Weather report: 40% chance of rain for tomorrow.

Columbus circle at night.

That’s it for now! Don’t forget to participate on our giveaway!

Good night!

Cheers!

ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 11

Day 11
Busy Sunday. Many people came by to say hi.
We made the front page of several major newspapers in Mexico since yesterday, which is why today we received the visit of many Mexicans saying “You guys are famous! RAVPower all the way!” We’ve also been all over Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador. Again, busy Sunday.

The bad news: Brian, one of the RAVPower Team members, got his sleeping bag stolen. We were getting ready to sleep just a couple of minutes ago when suddenly he couldn’t find it anywhere. We believe that someone might have taken it last night while we were all sleeping because Brian wasn’t using it. It was laying down under the tarp that we used to cover our gear from the rain. We already searched everywhere and even contacted the NYPD. Let’s see how it goes. We will all pitch in tonight to make a bed for Brian. We’ve got a couple of spare blankets and pillows for him to use. Hopefully it will be enough for him to pass the night.
The good news: we are getting closer to the launch date. This friday we will finally be able to enter the Apple Store and purchase the brand new iPhone 6 Plus!
More good news: it stopped raining and the sun came out today! We were able to use our super RAVPower Solar Charger again! It works like a charm.
We also got to do our laundry before lunch. Clean clothes to last us until Friday, until the big day!

Laundry time!

Even more good news: we got to enjoy a beautiful sunset and the visit of someone very special (you’ll find his photo if you scroll down a bit more).

Beautiful sunset.

More sunset...

And even more sunset 🙂

Today's special visitor 🙂

Health Report: NO MORE SORE THROAT! Today, Mia gave me some honey and eucalyptus candy and the pain went away. I’ll still try to be careful, but anyways, no more pain for now.

Weather Report: Sunny all week long… except Tuesday, 40% of rain.

Bonus photo: Jonah taking a nap after a very busy morning 🙂

That’s all for today.
Good night!

Cheers!
ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 10

Day 10

Hi guys, Ed here again. Today was probably the slowest day we’ve had. No interviews at all, except, well, the pedestrians who approached us and questioned us about our endeavor. Even thought was slow, the weather made it feel as the longest day ever. We had rain since around 2pm until just about an hour ago, 10pm more less. No lightnings, though.

Here I am, trying to survive the rain.

While we were having dinner, Jonah was making a call somewhere and was on hold for almost half an hour before I asked: “What are you doing?” He then replied, “I am canceling my order.” I was confused, so I asked:  “It takes this long to cancel a pizza?” I asked this because he tried to order a pizza for dinner an hour before. He looked at me and began laughing like a crazy person. It turns out that he was trying to cancel an order that he managed to place somehow for 2 iPhone 6 the previous night; however, the delivery date on the order was October 19th… too late.

Today we found out that we made it to the front page of several major newspapers in South America! Way to go, RAVPower Team!

The rest of the day went by so slow. Clouds covered New York City until like 20 minutes ago. We are expecting better weather for the rest of the week, except Tuesday. For now, we need to dry our gear before we can get some sleep. It’s cold, very cold.

A couple of hours ago we got to meet Fred Schebesta, the first guy in Australia to buy an iPhone 5 two years ago. He shared with us his story about how he camped for 5 days to get thr phonr. Afterwards, he even agreed to take a photo with us.

The RAVPower Team and Fred Schebesta.

Health Report: I am still sick and Jonah just feels very tired and finally… he FEELS COLD! 🙂

That’s it for now.

Good Night!

Cheers!
ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 9

Day 9

Another slow day. Last night Jonah stayed up until 3am trying to preorder the iPhone online, but he couldn’t. The Apple Store website was completely saturated and even crashed down for a couple of hours. When it came back up, Jonah could only find the iPhones available for delivery after the end of September… useless.

Jonah waiting at 3am to buy the iPhones online.

The days are passing by so fast that I cannot even finish all my daily tasks until after 6pm. It’s good, I guess, the fact that September 19th will come faster, that is; however, sometimes I feel like… time is consuming us.

When we first heard of this task we were very excited to come and up to now we still are, but every single day that passes we become more and more tired. We are exhausted. But anyways, we won’t give up. Only one week to go.

The bright side of this trip is that we are achieving our objective. Today, there were several people from Spain and from France that came and told us: “You are the guys from the news, we saw you on the news.” The Spanish couple even told me: “You are the guy from the RAVPower’s Youtube channel, right?”. We are spreading RAVPower to the world. This means that all our efforts are worth it.

Mrs. Nazan Isik and the RAVPower Team!

Today we received the visit of a very nice lady from Turkey, Mrs. Nazan Isik, who comes every single day to visit us and bring us goodies and food. Today we got wafers! She is a lovely person, an awesome writer, and a very good photographer. She says she considers herself part of the RAVPower team and… she really is! 🙂

Today we also received a new addition to our camping gear… the all new RAVPower Solar Charger! You’ll be able to get one of these online from our amazon store this November. We will now be able to harvest all the energy we need directly from the sun!

RAVPower's new Solar Charger!

Weather Report: 80% rain for tomorrow morning, 8am.

Health Report: same old, same old… Jonah is healthy and I have a sore throat.

Good night everyone!

Cheers!

ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 8

Wow, I can’t believe that it’s been more than a week and we are still sleeping on the streets. To be fair, we are very well equipped with sleeping bags, reclinable chairs, blankets, clothing, and of course… lots and lots of ENERGY for our mobile devices thanks to all the RAVPower products we brought!

On yesterday’s post I told you guys about two incidents that have happened throughout our time here. Both very disturbing, but thankfully, one of them is over… for good?

This morning, the voice of justice to wake us up. At around 8:30am, the chief of security from the GE building came to our camping site and asked us who did all those empty chairs (the ones I showed you guys on yesterday’s post) belong to. We quickly replied that some security guards from the GE building brought them here in order to be able to sell those spots later on and make a good profit out of this. Yes, in other words, these chairs were placed here by some of the chief’s employees. Without hesitating, he made a call using his radio and a couple of minutes later, a guy from the maintenance team arrived with a big wheeled garbage container. One by one they took the empty chairs and placed them inside it. “If you are not on your chair from sunset to sunrise, it means you are not in the line,” after saying this, they left.

Justice...

Even more justice...

We were all excited to see that finally Mia, a very kind nurse who was at the back of the line and who took leave only to be here for the iPhone 6 because she really loves Apple that much, was now next to us in line, meaning she will be the 9th person to get her new phone on September 19th!

Here is Mia being bothered by me and my camera 🙂

The rest of the day went by very fast. No media today.

On this same day 13 years ago, a terrible tragedy happened here in New York City. Today, even though we couldn’t move from the line, we witnessed the reading of the 9/11 victims’ names on the TV. We all took a moment to remember everything that happened that day and hope with our hearts that nothing this horrible will ever occur to this or any other country in the world.

9/11 Memorial

Health Report: Jonah… yeah, super healthy -_- and me, I’m tired and still with a sore throat.

Weather Report: The forecast has been saying that it will rain Saturday and several days next week. Well, we can only hope for the best… this means, NO RAIN! 🙂

Enough for today, good night!

Cheers!

ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 7

Day 7

Today, we could finally rest for a bit. Don’t get me wrong, we still had work and give several interviews, but nothing like the previous days. 

Many people ask us if it is really safe to sleep outside on the street. It has been up to now it has been; however, this doesn’t mean that we haven’t experienced any disturbing events during our stay. 

The first one occurred the second night we spent here in New York City. We were just trying to have some rest when this annoying security guard came and tried to bully us out of the line claiming that we were sitting in his spot (of course we weren’t). He went on and on saying that we were cutting in line, but didn’t manage to accomplish anything except becoming more and more frustrated with himself. 

He came back today and called the N.Y.P.D. to complain about us cutting in line… again. However, even the police asked him to stop acting like a child and get back to work. We laughed. 

The bad thing is that him and his fellow security guards have placed several chairs after us in the line and have claimed that those are their seats (even though they are NEVER here).

They expect to sell these spots for at least $1000 USD next Friday, September 19th, the day when the new iPhones come out. It’s annoying because all the way at the back of the line there is a girl name Mia who has actually spent two nights here already (this night will be her third) but cannot get closer to us because of these security guards and their hunger for money. 

The second disturbing incident that we have experienced occurred a couple of days ago. A guy by the name of Brian Silverman came by to say hello. At first he seemed like a normal middle-aged man who just wanted to talk to us. Although he seemed smart at first, I wasn’t interested at all in engaging on a conversation with him. He left for a while but came back just after sunset. This time, behaving like a … well, let’s just say he was very aggressive and impolite. He began insulting us up to the point where Joe almost punched him in the face; however, he managed to run away. 

He came back the next morning and continue with his behavior. We scared him away and he hasn’t been back since. 

I guess living on the streets can be a little disturbing, but still, we won’t quit this quest. Only 9 more days to finally get our iPhones! We’re almost there. 

Weather Report: the cold autumn is here to stay… 

Good Night! 

Cheers!

ed

iPhone 6 Quest: Day 6

Day 6

Finally, the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch were announced today as well as the release date: September 19th, 2014, exactly 10 from today. This means, that this adventure is still far from over.

Today we got media from all over the world interviewing us. Big agencies, freelancers, bloggers, they all wanted to hear our story, especially the answer to the question… “Why are you camping out for a phone?” The problem was that they were here very early this morning, way before we woke up. Even Lauren Simonetti from Fox News twitted a photo of all of us sleeping and asking “Should I wake them up?”. Thankfully, she didn’t.

It is crazy how this iPhone 6 quest has escalated so quickly. A week ago no one knew who we were and today, our faces are all over the world in different languages.

About the iPhone, we’ve decided to each buy the 5.5″ iPhone 6 Plus with 128GB. I’m guessing that will be enough for us. We (mostly me) are a bit upset about the Apple Watch release date: beginning of 2015. I was excited to get one, but well… I guess I’ll have to wait, except that this time I will do it at home.

Health Report: Jonah is as healthy as a horse and me, well, I still have a sore throat.

Weather Report: cold, windy, and cloudy… perfect for camping out on the streets of New York City.

That’s it for tonight, I will continue tomorrow. Good night!

Cheers!
ed