Off The Grid - By The Numbers

October 19, 2005 | Filed Under Technology, General 

Number of days Off the Grid: 10.

Number of days not thinking about work: 9.

Number of voicemails awaiting me: 1 (Perhaps due in part to my away message).

Number of e-mail messages awaiting me: 177.

Number of Wi-Fi hot-spots found here:

why wi-fi?

0.

Number of years wife of Wired GC had to endure before going Off the Grid: 25.

Number of books read while Off the Grid: 1. (Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux; here’s an excerpt from the first chapter):

I wanted to drop out. People said, “Get a cell phone, use FedEx, sign up for Hotmail, stop in at Internet cafés, visit my Web site …”

I said no thanks. The whole point of my leaving was to escape this stuff, to be out of touch. The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. As Huck put it, lighting out for the territory.

Africa is one of the last great places on earth a person can vanish into. I wanted that. Let them wait. I have been kept waiting far too many times for far too long.

I am outta here, I told myself. The next Web site I visit will be that of the poisonous Central African bird-eating spider.

Source. (Free copy of this book to the first reader correctly naming the not-spot pictured above).

Number of days until going Off the Grid again: 133 (and counting).