Diary of a Temporary Techno Exile

Image by radiant guy via Flickr

On Sunday, I undertook a major move to another city four and half hours away. Through a combination of having long been one of the NYT’s so-called cell phone refuseniks (but without the patina of moral superiority in my case) and having waited until the last minute to book a technician to install wireless internet at my new digs, it was going to be a decidedly low-tech few days. No problem, a little timeout from 24/7 connectivity would do me good (or so I thought). And it’s not as if I’m one of those click-happy tweens frittering away my days suckling at the digital teat,  right? Right?  Oh, the hubris of the young and technologically privileged. Here’s what really happened.

Sunday

2:00 PM – Movers ask if they can drop off furniture tonight instead of tomorrow. Realize I only have landlord’s email and not phone number. Realize that I don’t have any way of emailing him, nor of communicating results of impossible-to-send email to movers while they’re in transit.

4:00 PM – Take advantage of free internet at the airport. Email landlord. Attempt to activate year-old cell phone received as a present for Christmas 2008 via provider’s website. Fail.

4:30 PM – Look up directions from airport to hotel on Google Maps. Recreate them with pen on a post-it note. Look up route from hotel to nearest Thai restaurant in similar fashion.

7:00 PM – Arrive in destination city. Proceed directly to hotel. Free Wifi! Am excited to an unseemly degree.

8:45 PM Worried about movers and where they might be, especially concerned about the one whom I’ve dubbed Schillinger due to his uncanny resemblance to J.K. Simmons. Look up phone number on my email. Call via Skype. No answer. Very bad sign. Attempt to activate cell phone again.

Monday

9:00 AM – Call cell phone company via Skype. Activate phone. Realize phone needs to be charged by something other than simply the force of my will. Curse fates.

9:30 AM – Look up directions from hotel to new apartment

10:00 AM- Use hotel business center to print out copy of lease

11:00 AM – Arrive at apartment. No movers. Realize that their number is only saved in my email. Realize everyone in a four-block radius has secured their home wireless networks. Plug in phone to charge.

11:30 AM -  Starbucks. Order a tall soy chai latte with a side of internet access. Find phone number. Call movers via Skype. Yes, with headphones.

12:30 PM – Meet movers at apartment

1:30 PM – Realize I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Decide to go grocery shopping, but have no way to figure out where the nearest supermarket might be. Grab cloth bags and gamely try to pretend I’m going on an adventure. Feel like Magellan, only hungrier.

2:00 PM – Pass public library while searching for sustenance. Remember hearing somewhere (at my late grandfather’s knee?) that libraries sometimes offer free internet access. Wonder if this quaint antiquity still exists in a Baby’s First Cell Phone (makes a great christening gift!) world. Resolve to find out.

4:00 PM – Call mother on newly-charged cell phone. Buttons are so tiny! Wonder if they actually sell those Simpsons-esque dialing wands. Mother promises to google remedies for ridding apartment of the stale smoke smell of previous tenants. Offers to send the  results to me via carrier pigeon. I laugh, but it’s a laugh of rueful resignation.

6:30 PM – Arrive at library. See more than a dozen individuals with laptops. My people! Soon realize that at least half of my people are surfing porn.

9:30 PM – Decide to call it a night, but not before receiving a text message from a friend and attempting to respond. Quit when I realize that I could walk to her place on the other side of the city faster than I could type three lines.

10:00 PM – Fall asleep feeling humbled and chastened, but also curious about how far behind on Twitter I’ll be when I get back online.