The sun sits someplace up beyond the roofline of the building we are in, casting a shadow-theatre of landing and shuffling birds (on the roof above us), elongated and cartoonish, over the pavement and parked cars just outside the window next to me. It creates a constant sense of movement in my right peripheral vision, pulling my glance out the window and onto the not-very-distant Cascade mountain peaks limned in golden light. "Remember," it quietly but persistently whispers, "why you are here."
The coffee shop allows my wife and I to get a little necessary work done by tapping into both their caffeine and their wireless bandwidth, the latter being almost non-existent at the place we are staying. You can pretty well predict what you will find at any hotel or resort that advertises "complimentary wireless" in guest rooms: the meanest hint of a wireless router located someplace just on the fringe of your device's range, flickering in and out of reach. Or, if the router is within reach, it will deliver the sort of bandwidth that feels like an occasional quarter-teaspoon of crawling access. It doesn't help that cellular data service in the area is just as bad.
At a large bustling urban hotel I can almost understand this, what with the rapid explosion of bandwidth-hogging mobile devices and the threadbare profit margins of the hospitality industry. But we're staying in a rambling estate of a resort with small cabin clusters and (if our count is correct) a total of three other parties besides ourselves. The "complimentary wireless" should hardly be taxed. Maybe our cabin's router is located a couple of clusters down the path? After quite a bit of experimentation, I discovered that sitting on the toilet allows me to pick up just enough wireless access to sl.....o.....o.....o.....ly pull up a couple of web pages to check on local attractions.
Still, this is the only disappointment in our destination, which is otherwise charming, beautiful, and tranquil. It makes for a perfect short getaway destination, and offers the chance to restfully recalibrate our internal compasses, if only for a couple of days.
After this brief coffee-shop work break we will do a little more top-down canyon carving (and probably find the magic source of Aplets and Cotlets) before coming back to our temporary resort, with it's tantalizingly teasing "complimentary wireless," to walk the trails along the river, find a warm chair or rock from which to catch up on reading, or to just sit and talk.
And, really, how much bandwidth do we need, under these circumstances, anyway?
- Posted via Hermes.
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