It was just past 4 p.m. on a sunny March Wednesday as my 18-year old son Alex and I descended the east side of Vail Pass in our rented Chevy SUV.
It was the sixth day of our annual ten-day Colorado ski vacation. We were returning to our condo for showers before heading out to dinner having just spent the day wearing out my old knees skiing the Back Bowls of Vail Resort.
The skier traffic surrounding us on I-70 – the main artery connecting the ski resort towns – was pretty light. Given that traffic on I-70 during ski season can often resemble rush hour in a major city, I was thinking that we were lucky to be cruising along at sixty-five.
As we neared the bottom of the pass, I noticed tail-lights popping on up ahead. In short order we slow to 50, then 40, then 10, then zero miles per hour as cars, other SUVs, and eighteen wheelers quickly turned this marvel of highway engineering into a two-lane parking lot.
Having traveled this stretch of I-70 for years, I’ve seen more than a few traffic jams due to weather, avalanches, or accidents. Waiting in traffic on I-70, sometimes for hours or even overnight, is just one of the risks you accept when taking a Colorado ski vacation – like crashing into a tree or paying $9.95 for a ski resort cheeseburger.
Until recently, one of worst parts about being stuck in traffic up here was that there was no reliable way to communicate with the outside world. Although cell phones are an essential part of most skier’s gear (like warm gloves and sunscreen), getting a decent cell phone signal when you’re surrounded by ten thousand foot mountains was often hit or miss.
Even when you could connect, the connection would often drop or be of such poor quality as to make talking to someone more trouble than it was worth. So usually you just sat, and swore, and tried to pass the time hoping that you didn’t need a bathroom before you got to where you were going.
This year, though, things had changed – wireless broadband has come to most parts of the mountains! As soon as it was clear that we were in for a long wait, I fished out my new PDA/cell phone from the inside pocket in my well worn ski jacket and punched in the number for the Colorado Department of Transportation road report.
It’s 511 in case you ever need it.
I noticed that I was getting a three bar signal and the call is going through as though I were in downtown Green Bay. In under a minute a recorded voice (sounding just like the physicist Stephen Hawkings) told me that the reason we were stopped was due to an accident at the Copper Mountain Exit (about 2 miles up the road), that emergency vehicles are on the scene and that the road should be open again shortly. I was strongly advised to turn off my engine to save gas and not leave my vehicle as traffic may begin moving again at anytime.
While I listened to “Dr. Hawkings,” Alex entertained himself text messaging friends back in Wisconsin on his Motorola Razr.
I am grateful that 21st century communication infrastructure allows me to know why I was stuck in this high alpine traffic jam. There is also a certain peace of mind knowing that should I not make it to the bottom of Vail’s Sun Up Bowl (more likely today than it was when I first skied Vail 30 years ago), that Alex or some Good Samaritan can pull out a phone, dial 911, and have the local ski patrol attend to me before I freeze to death.
Unfortunately, for all its benefits, the recent expansion of wireless broadband access throughout the mountains significantly lessened the enjoyment I got from going on this year’s trip. It also highlighted a side of my personality that I never knew existed.
You see, until this year, one the pleasures of going on these trips was being able to willingly disconnect myself from home, the office, and most world events. I found it liberating to sever temporarily the various connections that are usual and even essential to my day-to-day business and personal life.
Except to order a pizza, make a dinner reservation, or call home to talk to my wife, I seldom used a phone while on these trips. TV watching was generally confined to checking the snow conditions and watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament or Seinfeld reruns. We never watched the news or anything even remotely educational. This was, after all, vacation; we were getting away from it all.
Breaking these connections was guilt free. After all, it wasn’t my fault that due to geography, most of the mountain areas lacked the level of communications infrastructure so common at home. “Gee,” I’d say, “I would love to call you or respond to your email, but you know, broadband access just isn’t available at the condo. I’m lucky if I can get decent FM radio! Sorry, but I’ll have to call you next week when I’m back in town.”
Family, co-workers, and friends readily accepted as unimpeachable fact that for the next week or so I couldn’t be reached. That no one should expect to hear from me except in the direst of circumstances and maybe not even then. Everyone knew that “Tom and Alex had left the building.”
Just before heading out West this year, I bought a new Samsung PDA/cell phone to replace my five-year-old Nokia (no email, no camera, and no Internet access) phone. In comparison to my well-traveled Nokia, this truly marvelous device sends and receives emails from up to eight sources, surfs the Internet, plays music, takes both still pictures and video movies, runs various Windows applications, and does a whole lot more that I haven’t had time to discover in the 300-page manual I accidentally printed out the other day. It never occurred to me until it was too late that this new phone would quickly take over my vacation.
Once I discovered that I could get reliable wireless broadband almost everywhere in the mountains – not just at the condo in town, but on chair lifts, driving in the SUV, while eating lunch at the top of a mountain – I found it nearly impossible to not use one or more of the features of this new phone. I don’t know exactly what got into me but I couldn’t stop myself from reading and replying to emails at all hours of the day or night. I obsessively checked the stock market, downloaded national news stories, and of course, called people back home to talk about both important and trivial subjects. I must have called my wife six times a day (OK, maybe seven or eight) even when I had nothing at all to say. Throughout the day, I’d email photos to family and friends taken with the phone’s built in camera – adding cutesy little text messages to each photo.
I also agreed to attend a conference call with some colleagues on the East Coast even though, with the time difference, I had to take the call at 6 am. I made lots of calls while riding on ski lifts.
In years past, I would spend the first hour or two of each morning cooking and enjoying a hearty breakfast with Alex before hitting the slopes. This year, I spent the same time responding to emails over a bowl of cold cereal and a cup of coffee.
On more than one occasion, I replied to an email that started a thread that took several hours of back and forth emails to resolve. Even when not connected, I’d spend time formulating replies to emails in my head, instead of just skiing and enjoying the spectacular Colorado scenery.
In less than one week, I went from being a casual wireless user to someone who had developed a pretty serious “Wireless Jones.” Until this trip, I used to laugh at the people I’d see who seemed to be permanently connected to their wireless devices – even when on vacation. I’m not laughing anymore.
The result of all of this calling and emailing (besides a large Verizon bill) is that when I returned home it occurred to me that I never really got the enjoyment of leaving my normal day-to-day world behind for a few days. I never felt as though I had truly gone on vacation.
Instead, I’d merely taken a lot of my normal life and tried to mash it together with my vacation life. I was never able to hit that metaphysical “pause button” that allowed me, in years past, to live a different and much freer life for a few days while skiing.
Since returning home, I have decided to limit the use of my new phone, at least outside of regular business hours. Somehow, I don’t think I am cut out to be a “wired” individual – at least not a 24/7 wired individual. I’ve decided to turn off the email feature on weekends or when I’m not working.
I now store the phone in the kitchen drawer with my wallet and keys instead of keeping it attached to my belt where it is far too easy to pull out and turn on.
I’m sure that over time I will learn to control this addiction, but I think I’ll take my old Nokia phone with me to Colorado next year. Just to be safe.
