Cabins

November 14, 2004

“The Elf”:http://www.elfnoodles.com/ and I spent this last weekend in a cabin near Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. We were supposed to meet some friends there, but due to a mind-bogglingly enormous screw-up on my part they couldn’t find the cabin and ended up driving all the way back home the same night while we worried that they had driven off the dirt road and were laying in a ditch unconcious.

Note to self: confirm your friends recieved the _correct_ directions to the destination before getting out of cell-phone range.

The trip served as an interesting reminder to us about just how cityfied we’ve become. We were absolutely astounded at how remote we really were — no cell phones, no long distance phone service (special note: thank you rental cabin proprietors for no long distance service!), a one-hour round trip to the grocery store, and a bridgeyou can’t cross when the river is flooded made us _really_ appreciate things like subways and grocery stores and excellent Vietnamise restaurants in walking distance.

On the other hand, a cabin on the river, near absolute silence, and a sky _filled_ with stars is a fantastic and refreshing change of pace.

The _particular_ cabin we were in had some problems. Renting a cabin is not cheap, so I expected something a little more in the way of furnishing. It was nice, but corners were cut wherever possible. For example, there were no curtains in the upstairs bedroom on the river side. The curtains weren’t needed for privacy, but it would have been nice to sleep longer than sunrise. And Dish Network television was a nice idea, but the television was on the fritz and there wasn’t anyone to call on the weekend to replace it (since I don’t consider a fritzing television an “emergency.”)

Once we learned our friends were not dead in a ditch, it was a nice quiet and refreshing weekend. I am now prepared to start my new non-telecommuting office job tomorrow morning.

Well, mostly prepared.

I’m afraid I’m going to miss my cats.

Posted in Diary