2023, Family, Technology, Travel, Uncategorized

Low Tech

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Wednesday was the most frustrating day. I drove from St. Cloud to near Oshkosh, WI to visit husband’s sister and BIL. I have never encountered such road construction for so many miles. The trip took about six hours. The day before our trip to St. Cloud took seven hours. I haven’t encountered such traffic for a long while. Where are all these people going?

One of the detours near Watoma, WI took us past several huge fields of cabbage. That was lovely to see. When we arrived at the family house, I found that they didn’t have wifi, so I couldn’t use my computer to show them the Ancestry info I had promised them. They have a computer and pay for wifi but have it all unplugged and turned of. This is a low tech household. We will go to the local library to access the wifi there. Whatever works, I guess. One problem is that I couldn’t figure out how to insert a header photo on my phone. Maybe I will add it tomorrow at the library.

Tell about your most memorable trip? How do you deal with being off-line?

28 thoughts on “Low Tech”

  1. I treat being off-line as a holiday from my baser instincts. It is like going on retreat.

    As for bad trips, I haven’t had any bad long-distance ones for a long time, because I take the train for those, leaving the driving to the professionals, and the schedule to the whims of railroad dispatchers.

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  2. Our biggest detour was when we tried taking Amtrak from Seattle area to Mpls one April when the bridge at Minot, ND got flooded out. Had to fly home from there.

    I’m OK being offline if I know about it ahead of time, which of course doesn’t often happen. I am a luddite in many ways, but I do rely on this computer for all kinds of daily communications, esp. now that we’re back to all the UU committee stuff, etc.

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    My keyboard is back today so I can participate. When without wifi, I use my phone’s hotspot which works for simple interactions or a brief bank transfer. The rest I can do without for awhile.

    Bill’s story about a “resort” in SE Colorado is now MY most memorable trip. That one is awesomely funny. I don’t know which of my trips is most memorable. There was one in Arizona and New Mexico in 2009 that involved two, 2! Car accidents. The first accident in Phoenix involved some kind of criminal activity (probably a gun runner) whose car stalled on the freeway in a middle lane. We stopped in time to miss that but we were rear-ended by a teen-ager running to Subway for a sandwich. The gun-runner got out of the car and tried to push it off the road. An SUV pushed it off the road to the side. The man then vanshed. The cops later told us that the car was registered to a PO box which is illegal and meant it was part of a criminal operation. I felt like I was part of a crime mystery novel. The second accident occurred later in Sante Fe where we were sideswiped. A very abusive police officer charged us with responsibility just because. Man-oh-man. We had good iinsurance. I now carry a travel insurance through my professional organization because these things can happen.

    I just love to travel and explore. I have two trips in Europe to schedule and book. One to Ireland where I want to see many things, but especially my Irish Ancestors stone house that they left in 1843 during the famine on the sea in County Down. The second is an Italian resort, Villa Lena. Lou does not walk easily anymore, so it is a site he could enjoy without lots of walking. They specialize in encouraging artists and floral expression, so I must go there.

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  4. hot spot or simply get caught up on mounds of stuff i can do with pen or on device without wifi
    memorable horrible trips don’t come to mind
    i used to drive 29 to oshkosh or 10 and the traffic is always full of cheeseheads driving 45 mph
    you learn to pass for a while but then it literally minutes til you arrive at the next snail cheesehead
    stop and have a beer and a bump of blackberry brandy
    the local bars are all priceless
    i used to drive across there and see so many beautiful places if only you could figure out how to make a living from bumfuch wherever we’ll today you can
    remote work is a thing
    those cabbages were planted by a guy named flannigan
    a silver spooned guy who is great but clueless
    i love cabbage fields too
    my people are from irish road in osh kosh
    mills fleet farm country
    be sure to stop in
    i’m trying to remember the name of the good bacon for your trip back
    it’s on 29

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    1. We have driven through Wisconsin many times. Often a very slow car pulls out in front of us without ever looking or realizing they came close to causing an accident. Really frustrating. I swear every driver in Wisconsin is driving blind.

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  5. I admit it; I don’t like not having internet access. I check my bank account every day (2 banks since I am switching banks), communicate with my kids, and stream entertainment. My daughter and sil are on a big trip. Heading from Gatlinburg to the Shenandoah Valley today. She sends us photos and stories from where she has been.
    I order a lot online. Hate it but many things are cheaper and clothes for people in care are better from specialty catalogs.
    Downtown Mankato is a mess, in middle of multi-year project to replace very old pipes of all sorts under the streets. So hard to get anywhere. Now they just closed two main streets. I try to avoid driving through campus for awhile when MSUM first opens by driving through downtown, but they closed the street I use. It would be a long detour. It was ok coming over. I guess it has settled down there. Lots of new people figuring out how how to drive in this crazy town. So many kids come to college with cars. My two grandkids do.
    Clyde

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  6. Great topic for me. I just made the decision a few days ago that I need to stay off of Facebook and YouTube. There just isn’t anything compelling enough on either of those sites to warrant how I can get lost down rabbit holes. I thought that it would make me antsy and that I would have trouble staying away but the first four days haven’t been a problem.

    It’s been a while since that I can remember being completely off-line but when it does happen, I just try to remind myself that 30 years ago we didn’t even have online and we all survived.

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  7. I use the messenger side of Facebook to communicate with groups, such as my two kids, or four of my former students. Avoid the other part. I am hooked on a British quiz show which I can only get on YouTube. Avoid the rest. Don’t know about all the other social media.
    Online appointments with specialty doctors in the cities, at least some, are a relieve for me

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  9. I’m curious, how would I know a cabbage field if I saw one??

    I’m getting better and putting my phone down and walking away.
    But it’s become such a huge way of communication; family, college stuff, theater stuff, township stuff… and because we live in a hole out in the country, spotty wifi has just always been a a part of my life. We had a ‘cell signal’ extender for a while. I have to stand by the North Windows for best cell phone reception.

    Way back when, when cell phones were new, Verizon had the best coverage. ATT only worked if you stood on the front row seat of the theater and held the phone over your head.

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  11. I did most of my traveling in my twenties: Europe in 1965-66 including living with a family near Zurich then a trip to Greece and Italy; hitchhiked with a friend from Alaska to Montana; several months on Cape Cod including motorcycle side trips to Maine, Quebec; trip to Washington DC to participate in March on Washington in 1969; trip from Colorado to New Orleans; summer working in Yellowstone. Later best trip was to Ireland with poet Robert Bly and storyteller Gioia Timpanelli. More recent trips to relatives in Norway and Sweden have also been wonderful. Since I retired from MPR in 2014 I haven’t been anywhere….well, did go to a horse auction in Iowa in March this year….highways were good, not much traffic, weather perfect, visit with my cousins super.
    Hope I can get on the Trail Baboon page so I can read and “like” all the comments.

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  12. I did most of my traveling in my twenties: Europe in 1965-66 including living with a family near Zurich then a trip to Greece and Italy; hitchhiked with a friend from Alaska to Montana; several months on Cape Cod including motorcycle side trips to Maine, Quebec; trip to Washington DC to participate in March on Washington in 1969; trip from Colorado to New Orleans; summer working in Yellowstone. Later best trip was to Ireland with poet Robert Bly and storyteller Gioia Timpanelli. More recent trips to relatives in Norway and Sweden have also been wonderful.  Since I retired from MPR in 2014 I haven’t been anywhere….well, did go to a horse auction in Iowa in March this year….highways were good, not much traffic, weather perfect, visit with my cousins super.  Hope I can get on the Trail Baboon page so I can read and “like” all the comments. (I finally am allowed in but it won’t post my comments….?) Cynthia “Life is a shifting carpet…learn to dance.”

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  13. I am a bit of a Luddite – am not connected to my cell phone 24 hours a day. I do like the convenience of communicating via technology but I don’t wish to be a slave to it either. I definitely have a love hate relationship with any technology – live it when it works and hate it when it doesn’t.

    Many of my big trips have been wonderful and uneventful until recently. On the cruise to the Antarctic, a woman fractured her hip on our first full day of sailing and we had to turn back to Ushuaia to get her to a hospital. Luckily we still made all of our shore excursions so it wasn’t a huge deal (except to the poor injured woman). On my return from Ireland/Scotland there was a medical situation requiring us to turn around near Iceland and head back to Dublin. That was a 2 hour detour plus over an hour on the ground. Then we had to stop in Boston for a mandatory crew change – again on the ground for an hour. For both delays, we had to remain on the plane. I got home nearly 5 hours late. On my recent trip to Alaska, there was another medical situation requiring us to stop in Seattle. We had to deplane with our carry on baggage, wait in the gate area for nearly an hour, and then go through reboarding. Instead of arriving in Anchorage at 8:15, we arrived at 11P. Thankfully the flight home was uneventful. Both of those plane rides were memorable in an unpleasant way. My most memorable uneventful international trips were a safari to Kenya/Tanzania, Morocco, the Antarctic (despite the delay), and Patagonia.

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  16. I haven’t taken any trips that made good stories. Mostly I’ve traveled for business conferences.

    A friend I went to school with flew to Baltimore for a conference that was to start September 12, 2001. The conference was canceled, and the attendees who were already there had to find transportation home. My friend joined a group that rented a car to drive back to Wisconsin.

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