Sunday, November 29, 2009

Stalking The Internet


We have a cable that runs from one end of the house out to an oak tree in the middle of the west yard. From there it stretches out to an outbuilding and then attaches to what looks like an upside-down baking sheet pointing due west.

A few years back, I was under the impression we did not have a "line of sight" to any Internet tower and were so destined to be on dial-up or go to satellite for faster Internet service.

I asked our local provider to come out and see what he could do for us, as he had some new "umbrella" coverage in the works and I thought we may qualify for that.

"Dude," he said when he got here and walked to the west edge of our property, "that's Eight Dollar Mountain right there. You can see the tower."

I could see the tower...

Mind you I had to pull some Douglas Fir boughs back out of the way... but there it was... a conical mountain with communication towers all visible if I squinted or put on my glasses...

And WE WERE SUFFERING WITH DIAL-UP.

"Sign me up," I told him. "And hook me up pronto!"

Well, this morning I went for a hike up the service road and to those towers. 2,500 feet in about 3 1/2 miles. A march, really, up and up a wet but not muddy dirt road that had been recently scraped with a dozer (as it was full of dozer tread-tracks in the red soil).

Funnily enough, I could never see our house from up there as the trees were all taller than I was and blocked my view.

As I climbed, I ran into this group of dead snags and stopped and took their picture.

"Are YOU the Internet?" I asked them.

They didn't seem to be.

Finally, after my legs grew wobbly and my dogs grew long-tongued and I stopped and changed my sweaty shirts for fresh ones as the wind began to howl...

There it was!

The INTERNET!




7 comments:

dogbait said...

There looks like a lot of internet there.

fairyhedgehog said...

Yay to the internet! So do you have a decent speed connection now?

Shrinky said...

Eureka! This will be life-changing - trust me!

Jeannie said...

It's not very pretty ...but

you've been on dial-up?

I think we quit that 15 years ago - before clinton and lewinsky went at it.
I didn't know anyone still did that. Dail-up I mean.

Scott from Oregon said...

"A few years ago" we went high speed. About the time I discovered You-Tube and live streaming Grateful Dead...

fuzzbert_1999@yahoo.com said...

The Internet sure has a lot of appendages...which building houses the porn stuff?

meno said...

Did you hear the angels sing when you first saw the internet?