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I Really Thought This Place Would Have WiFi

July 23, 2019

It was a stupid thought. I don’t say that lightly. I’m typing this on my phone. My bluetooth keyboard lit by the red glow of a hiker’s headlamp. To my left, a gas lantern hisses it’s sweet song of death to the dozens of moths attacking it.

It’s been a busy month. I mean busier than most. I’ve flown across the country twice. I’ve spent countless hours on outage bridges. I’ve watched my email account balloon to over 300 messages.

We decided to squeeze in a quick two day vacation with the kids before they head off to college and high school football camp, and jobs. My lovely wife planned it. She did all the work. She found a lovely spot, Miller something campground in Northern Utah. She planned the menu. She gave the kids packing lists.

My responsibiliity? Pretty simple: show up.

But, did I mention the really busy work schedule? Yeah, I mean, I can still be oncall, right? I do it during campouts. Okay, good. No need to arrange a backup. (One less thing.)

And the quarterly client meeting? It’s just a couple of hours in the middle of the day, right? No problem. I’ll just step away and dial in on my cell phone. I have the slides on my computer already.

And if other stuff comes up, I’ll just handle it while BEING ON VACATION!

That was my (stupid) plan.

I didn’t share the details with my lovely wife because she was already planning the bulk of the vacation. It will be fine. . .it wasn’t fine.

Last time I went on a family vacation, we went to St George, UT for Spring Break. We stayed in a KOA campground. KOA is like the Hilton of campgrounds. It had a pool, It had a store. It had water and electric hookups. And it had WiFi.

So, in my mind “family vacation” and “campgrounds have wifi” go together.

As we drove out here today my first warning was when my lovely wife said, “go to the campgrounds website and take a screenshot of the directions.”

“Why?”

“So you’ll still have them when you are out of cell phone range.”

Oops.

You might wonder how this particular blog post got posted if I’m in the High Uintas without cell or wifi service.

I have a car. I wrote this on my phone and then drove the 15 miles back out of Weber canyon to get a cell signal. It’s the same road I will travel tommorow when I “step away” to dial into my quarterly business meeting.

I don’t know what I was thinking. But, trust me, campgrounds in the High Uintas DO NOT have WiFi.

Rodney Bliss is a writer, father, grandfather and not very smart at times about technology

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