Hendy was in Toronto, had two young boys, and had started her own data migration business with her husband. Between midnight feedings and chasing her three-year-old on the hockey rink, Hendy had only a few windows open to chat with me. I was working on my first book and spending my summer in the mountains of Idaho. With a short-term rental, I couldn’t get a home Internet connection, so some friends offered up their wireless connection at their house. I pulled my Volvo into their driveway, turned on my laptop, put on my headphones, and called Hendy. My friends with the complimentary wireless connection were heading out for a mountain bike ride and laughed when they saw me armed with a laptop and customer-service-like headphones in the front seat of my car, so I waved them over, rolled down my window, and introduced them to Hendy via her webcam. (Skype allows users to see one another through their calls if they have a webcam attached to their computer.) And though I wasn’t high-tech yet, Hendy gave us a virtual tour of her new house in Toronto. She carried her laptop on her tour and stopped in the nursery. Then she angled her laptop and webcam and whispered, “Meet Charles,” as I was virtually introduced to her second-born son.
My next Skype date was just last week, but not as peaceful as my visit with a sleeping babe. I had a virtual date with Nikki, my Australian roommate, who I worked with in Bangkok and now lives in London. Nikki works nightshifts as a producer for the BBC and I was now editing the last chapters of my book. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to change my work environment on those final days and spend it at a girlfriend’s “tree house” nestled into the mountains of Marin County. It didn’t occur to me to ask if their Internet connection was in working order, so when I set out to test the technology, I bumped up against some difficulties. My cell phone was dead and the nearest wireless connection, if there was one, was down a long set of stairs called “The Dipsea Stairs.” The Dipsea Stairs were built by locals to walk from the hills into downtown Mill Valley and are used by yuppies to train for marathons or by Mommies who hike with their green-living babies.
