Frustrations of Cyberspace (Part 1 of what I am sure will be many)

We are on day 5 of no Internet connection. Now, this is not as bad as it could be because we still have cell phone service (which will go away in a couple of days) even if it is about $1.00 per minute. But the frustration comes, not from the lack of a connection per se, but the “so near and yet so far” quality of the lack.

For two days in Edmonton we were at a campground that featured free wifi – in fact they even had two access points to make the connection better. I had an excellent wireless signal. But we could almost never get connected because we couldn’t get an IP address. (Most of you who have used wifi will not have had this problem and probably were not even aware that there was such a thing.) It was a large (300 + sites) campground and I believe that they purposely limited the IP addresses available. I wouldn’t be surprised if they reserved the bulk of the addresses for seasonal campers (there were many) and left the rest of us to cope as we could.

So here we were, an excellent wifi signal and almost no connection to the Internet. (I say almost because in the middle of the night my e-mail client would get enough of a connection to have e-mail waiting for me in the morning. Judy doesn’t like to use an e-mail client so she could get no e-mail at all. Neither of us could ever use a web browser.)

Now, on to Jasper National Park. Judy will have regaled you with descriptions of beauty and wildlife, so I won’t do that. Our campground is first-rate – everything a campground in a national park is supposed to be. Of course national parks don’t have Internet connections, so we didn’t expect anything. But you don’t know until you try, so what the heck?

There it was. A wifi connection enticingly named “Free Public WiFi” with an excellent signal. But – you guessed it – we couldn’t get a connection. So here we are suffering from Internet withdrawal (a syndrome soon to be recognized by the AMA). We may try an Internet café in town tonight. We have to do laundry anyway. But maybe not. After all, our campground tomorrow night advertises free Internet.