Thursday, July 09, 2009

Not Quite the Information Super Highway

It's more like a trail

Dateline: In the vil

Pictured at right is the internet connection that I am currently working on. One might call it a little bit ghetto – but the .22 rifle tucked in the corner makes it indisputably vil.

As noted a number of blogs ago, quite a bit of my absence from FBH these past months has been because of writer’s block, but a lot of it is due to having found a second home somewhere north of the ‘Banks in the vil.

There is always plenty to do – swimming in the river, cutting meat, baking up treats with kids, keeping enough food on the table for an extended family – especially those who are working on building a home nearby – and generally just keeping on top of all the tasks that are part of daily life. Not much different than life as a cabin dweller – houses are small, most heat with wood, and there is no indoor plumbing in any private home. For a shower and the luxury of a flush toilet, a hike to the washeteria is required (except when the hot water boiler fails – which has been a reoccurring event of late).

One significant difference, though, is that when you realize (as I did last night) that you forgot to include a power strip, internet and printer cables with the new computer just ordered, well, there is no jumping in the truck and driving over to Computer Cache to pick up the missing parts. Nope, what one does instead is to call a buddy in town – in this case my blog mate – and ask for these things to be put on the plane. Of course, this requires friends willing to run around town doing errands and taking purchases out to East Ramp. ‘Dweller not only was willing to do the errands, she went to no less than three places to complete the shopping list – an effort that earns her at least two peartinis.

Alas – although she made freight before the mid-afternoon cut off for the afternoon flight – an excess of bypass, freight and passengers meant my little box of computer necessaries got bumped. They might make the morning flight, or they might not*. That too is the way of things out here. In the meantime, instead of spending the evening setting up a new computer at Tribal, I guess I’ll go swimming or take the kids for a bike ride. Bummer.

*After nearly a year of shipping groceries and freight out to friends in the vil, I have discovered that marking all boxes “CHILL” gets them out on the very next flight, because the bush taxi companies have limited refrigerated storage. I neglected to pass on this tip to ‘Dweller.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great to see this pic...what happened actually??


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