Cloudless in the Clouds

Cloudless...my worst part of the 7 1/2 hour flight to Honolulu from Guam was not the seat time, but rather the lack of connection to the Internet. Like being pulled from the matrix, I was faced with not having every question, thought, & whim in my head answered instantaneously. I was in an information wasteland. The price of being unplugged, of being 30,000 feet in the clouds, was I no longer had access to the cloud...the repository of knowledge and entertainment...my connection to the world. Like an information junkie, I needed my fix: what a cute pic of my friend's kids on Facebook (I haven't talked to them in twenty years, but hey); I wonder when the first commercial non-stop flight took place between Hawaii and Guam?; my ear is still blocked from diving two days ago, I should look that up... The list goes on and on, interrupted by the occasional gourmet meal served up in a cellophane wrapped plastic tray and restroom breaks. The drawback to being an ADD-type-of-person with a sense of Internet entitlement. I get annoyed when I am not jacked in getting my info dump of stuff (for the most part) I can live without. Kind of like being given a seat at the world's best buffet and instead of enjoying the finest meals, hunkering down with Spam, canned peas, & Twinkies...and then gorging on said Spam, canned peas, and Twinkies. I just don't deserve to be in the cloud most of the time. Hey, don't get me wrong. I do use it for productive things, too...helping educators find useful tools for the classroom is important...but for every Ying, I seem to have 2, 3, or 4 Yangs. I need balance, Grasshopper.

I realized I had a problem when I was hiking the final ascent of a mountain top in Wyoming with my children a few weeks ago. A gadget junkie, too, I was tracking the whole affair with a GPS (since it is important to electronically track ones distance and elevation on clearly marked trails with signage). At the peak I did the obligatory pictures (digital SLR AND digital point-and-shoot...yes, I have a problem), logged the elevation and peak in the GPS, and wondered about the time. I don't wear a watch, but had my smart phone in my pack, and I use that as a watch...so out it came. Here in back country Wyoming, at 12,000+ feet I got a signal! So I took away spending time with my children (precious time) to actually look at what email came in and then take another pic (with the smart phone, so at 3 cameras now) and posted it to Facebook. Yes-I-am-that-lame.

Almost every where I go I have information access...mountain tops in Wyoming to even all the main islands of Micronesia (and a few outer islands, as well). What do I do with said time on, though? Every thought becomes a quest for an answer. It will be even worse when my iPhone 4s is delivered next week, too! Perhaps then I should relish the time in the air (123,647 miles this year to date), and view it not as a curse, but a blessing. Already some airlines are offering wifi service on some flights. Once that happens I will be lost yet again to information overload. So now, on this plane, I will enjoy some solitude.  I will instead enjoy some reflection time, some writing time, get in some reading...and wonder about things the way I used to...before I had access to all the answers in the world.