motorola triumph no roaming?

i pay my bill and i noticed when you go out of bars or service ( no towers close)
that your roaming should kick in so you can still call and text, my old phone used to do it everytime
now i have a motorola triumph, its rooted using ginger break
and my roaming does not kick on when im out of service area
im on vacation and would really like to use this because it has horrible coverage in ocean city md..
by the way i checked the settings and the only thing in the settings/wireless&networks/mobile networks is the data enabled switch but nothing else. please help!