Few thrills on connectivity coaster

I have poked fun at the new gadgets we seem to have become addicted to for instant access to anyone, anytime or anything. What happens when we suddenly are not able to have this instant access? The feeling is equivalent to being teleported to the stone age.

Recently I accompanied my wife on a business trip to Las Vegas and was appalled at how difficult it was to stay connected in the city of lights. It may have been because everyone else was trying to stay connected and the systems were overloaded. I do not know, and really didn't care. I needed access to the internet (okay, I wanted it). The other irritation was the cell service was scratchy and iffy on most of the trip from Happy Valley to Vegas and continued intermittent and scratchy the entire time we were there.

I was not fully aware of how deprived I would feel without the access to individuals with whom I am working on numerous projects, but I did. In addition, I had a family situation arise in Elko, Nev., that required my attention and the internet and cell phone were my main means of communicating with my siblings spread over three states. The family situation forced a need to reschedule meetings and cancel appointments because I was not returning when I thought I would be.

Being retired, people may think I do not have the same need to be connected as much as say a person maintaining a regular job, but I soon found out that I do. I am a member of numerous boards of directors and we have projects for each of them. I also am writing grants for a program my daughter is involved in and those have deadlines to meet.

Suddenly no or slow internet was not only an inconvenience but felt as if I was trying to run a marathon with five-pound weights on each ankle. I have to laugh because I clearly remember twenty years ago returning to my hotel room at the end of a day at conferences, picking up messages and then trying to catch up with people the next morning before the conference resumed.

Then, we carried pagers and would try to phone between sessions of the conference or meeting, until along came bag phones and then to our present-day status of attachment to our electronic devices. It is really a belly laugh that these devices are heralded as providing more freedom and instant communication when, in a lot of cases, the exact opposite is true.

The irony of this situation was that there was a regular telephone in the room, but in order to utilize this instrument to conduct business, I needed to felt uncomfortable, alien and invasive. Not to mention that the cost of placing phone calls from your room is astronomical.

Also amusing was the fact that the cost is equivalent to what it cost originally to utilize what internet service was available in the beginning and dial-up was slow, costly and unreliable. Now we have WiFi, texting and celling, and when that gets unreliable, we become ultra stressed.

This experience has taught me a good lesson. Do not leave home without your good, old calling card from your long distance carrier. If you don't have one, get one! Or stock up on your stress meds before leaving home.