Gilligan's Island

We’ve been in our new house for over a week now and have gone through some significant transformations. This move is supposed to help us change some things that were entrenched in our lives but that we wanted to get rid of. One of those was the amount of TV we watched…especially our kids. We homeschool and so our kids are home a lot. The TV was too easy to fall back on and took up too much of our collective time. So, with the move we got rid of our cable subscription. The idea is that we can get most of the TV and movies we want using the internet. Sure, it’ll be hard to get professional and college football when the season comes around again, but I have some time to figure that one out. At least I can pay for cycling tv and watch the rest of the season online.

The one problem so far has been the internet access. We couldn’t get it switched from the old house to the new one until tomorrow. So, we’ve been using our Verizon mobile wireless. I generally use it when I work at my office in Aiken or when we are on the road. The hitch is that it has a 5 gig monthly limit. We’ve never had any trouble going over that…but we’ve never used it as our sole internet source, either. Well as of yesterday I had to stop using it because we were coming close to our limit. So….no TV and no internet…it is getting as primitive as can be here…like Robinson Crusoe.

I desperately wanted to watch some of the Paris-Roubaix race today. I was really hoping Hincapie would have his day on the cobbles. I knew I couldn’t watch it on our Verizon account because there wasn’t enough space. I tried to watch it on my wife’s IPhone, but couldn’t get a stream to watch. I started to get a bit frustrated and panicky. Then I realized that the internet was still hooked up at our old house. We haven’t completely moved out yet. I frantically got my son ready to head over there…under the guise of continuing the move. Really all I wanted was to watch the race. By the time I got my son ready it was 10am and I knew the race would wrap up by a little after 11. We got to the old house at 10:30 and immediately I tried to get a stream to watch the race. The problem was that I couldn’t find a stream that was active. I tried and tried but didn’t succeed until just a bit before 11am. By then, Spartacus (Cancellara) already had a huge lead with only 10K to go. I got to watch him mug for the camera and take his victory lap around the track at Roubaix. I missed most of the really parts of the race. It was then that I realized that the charm of my self-imposed electronic exile was starting to wear thin.

That dissatisfaction began percolating the day before when I got an email from my Dad. Most of the email was about sports—Tiger Woods and the Masters, Donovan McNabb, Brad Childress, and Tim Tebow, etc. The problem was that I hadn’t seen anything about sports for days because of my TV weaning experiment and dwindling internet access. I just now learned who won the Masters and still don’t know what he was talking about with McNabb, Tebow and Childress. Hell, I didn’t know who won the NCAA title until several days after it had happened, and up until that point I didn’t even know who had played. I am a bit of a sports junkie, so all of this is disconcerting.

Honestly, living at this new house has cut me off from the outside world. I feel like a castaway…like I am stranded on Gilligan’s Island. We’ve got the one white transistor radio and that is it…no phone, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury. I am waiting for my wife to break out the coconut cups and suggest we move into a bamboo hut and sleep in hammocks. Before I know it, I’ll be generating electricity using a bamboo stationary bike. I guess that will help me lose weight and prepare for long bike rides.

Tomorrow the cable guy is supposed to come and hook up our internet. My link to the outside world will be restored at last. I am just a little worried that there will be some problem and he won’t be able to do it. The last person to live in this house left when she was 90 and had lived here for decades. For all I know, the cable line I see poking out of the floor goes to that antenna on the roof and no where else. We’ll need to wire the damn house for cable and that will take a different work order, a different kind of technician…and another week. As I think about this possibility, the walls start to close in on me, my breathing gets labored, and the Gilligan’s Island theme begins to play in my head….I’m sweating a bit, too. If this keeps up, I might be forced to do the unthinkable. No, not get the TV hooked back up. I might just have to go to my office (gasp). The coffee sucks, there isn’t any food, and the nagging obligation to do work is always there, but at least there is internet…and news of the outside world.