This past weekend, my husband took me on his annual camping trip to the Catskill mountains. For those of you who know me, you know that I am not one to rough it. In fact, last week was the first time I have ever even been to the "Outdoor" aisle of any large department store.
As we drove up the mountain, the bars on my iphone slowly started to decrease. As they went from four, to three, to a sad dotted line, I started to panic. You see, it didn't even occur to me that there would be no cell reception in the woods. I used my phone in Argentina, my husband sent me text messages from Chennai, how could my phone not work in New York's Hudson Valley?
The first night, I made him drive to the lake so I could check my messages. If you stood in one spot, on one foot, you could get a weak signal. It tided me over for the evening, but by the next day, I was itching to get online. What was happening on twitter? Had anyone updated their relationship status on Facebook? What about all the blogs I follow? These were things I needed to know.
I'd like to say that my need to check email and voicemail decreased over the weekend, and that my trips to the lake decreased. Sadly, that's just not me. Every time we got high enough on a mountain, I pulled out the phone. While others were scaling waterfalls and spying shooting stars, I was refreshing my gmail (and dreaming about dinner).
As we were packing up to go home, everyone was talking about how relaxing the vacation was, not having cell reception, eating food off the grill, hiking through scenic trails. I was dreaming about my charger and the fudge stand on the New York State Thruway. Still, I did have a breakthrough moment. This morning, as I was coming out of the subway on Canal Street, it occurred to me that I should check my email to see if anything came in while I was on the train. And then, for a moment, I dreamed of the woods, where there was nothing to do but read Marie Claire and eat Chips Ahoy. Maybe there's a little bit of camper in me after all? Nah...
