First Email from the Land

I sent Kaitlin an email from the land this afternoon:

Sent from the land.

Not very long, but momentous.

We tried signing up for internet after our neighbor sent me the message Andy is FINE a month ago. At the time Dish didn’t have availablity, but they told me to keep phoning back. I did, they had an opening, and we were scheduled to go up last Sunday morning. We left here about 8:30 and were driving up when we received a call saying the installer couldn’t make it, the road he was taking was impassable because of snow.

So we rescheduled for this morning, but it got postponed a few hours, so we took off at 12:30 and got back home about 7:15 pm. That took a lot longer than we expected!

Part of the problem was the technician today didn’t have 4-wheel drive (the one last week did), so we had to park at the fire station while I waited in the Dish van and Andy drove up with the technician to get our truck. When they got back about a half hour later, the technician moved everything he needed to the back of our truck, then the three of us drove up together.

On the way back Andy drove the technician back to his van in our Jeep, then he came back for me. The technician had to wait for us at the main highway so Andy could unlock the Forest Service gate and let us all out. More complicated than some installations, I imagine.

It also took longer than we expected to install the satellite dish and modem.

Andy had tried to plan ahead and ran wiring for internet in the walls when we had the house built. Unfortunately it was a single wire, and for some reason Dish needs two wires, so we had to drill a hole in the wall after all. The original outlet was inconspicuous, the new one isn’t. The technician would have put it close to the floor, where it would have been less noticeable, but Andy wanted it safely above any snow drifts on the porch.

Once I moved some furniture back, it doesn’t look that bad in the study, so if it works we won’t complain.

We were impressed with the technician. He was friendly and professional to the end, even though it was clearly a long day for him. He had made two calls before ours, the first in Albuquerque, about a hundred miles away!

Fingers crossed that it keeps working. Texting using our cellphones doesn’t always work up there, and we do want a reliable way for him to reach me if anything goes wrong.

February 7, 2016