Mission:Impossible, pt. 3

There must be some mistake. This can't be right.

Those were my first thoughts upon opening my cell phone bill for the month after I returned from Canada. Vancouver's a mere 30 miles from U.S. soil, but the way T-Mobile and Catherine Zeta-Jones were charging me, 30 might as well have been 3000. Picking up the phone in Vancouver and calling the States had been akin to shooting myself in the leg while giving a classroom demonstration on gun safety.

Disbelief turned to outrage, and soon I was on the Internet looking for another cell phone carrier. I'd outed the smug Welsh voice from my head, and I was feverishly looking up "cell phone plan canada" and "north american cell phone plan".

Here's what I found: They're all out to get you. All your cheap minutes, free minutes, long distance, coast-to-coast minutes mean nothing once you cross that 49th Parallel. Only one cell phone carrier makes a concession, and that's Verizon. You can get a North American plan for $60 a month, but you'll get less than your usual bucket-load of minutes and you won't be able to roam into Canada. Thanks for nothing, 21st century! I felt myself floating down a current back to an earlier time of rotary phones and TV dinners.

Mission:Impossible, Pt. 2

Are you familiar with the Moscow Rules? It's the first thing they teach you in spy school (according to the International Spy Museum gift store, at least). Here's your Moscow Rule for today: Assume nothing.

Before I arrived in Canada that day in July, I'd planned on making calls to the States on Skype, a service that allows computer-to-computer calls for free. As a bonus, I'd get to see at least one person I'd be calling because we both have webcams. Unfortunately my plan had one weakness, one chink in its armor that rendered the whole thing useless -- the requirement for an Internet connection!

My host had lodged me in a dorm on campus. I arrived with visions of blazing fast Internet connections in my suitcase, along with my interview suit and buck shined shoes. I saw data whooshing through the air, and my head swam in wonder at the 21st century world in which I was privileged to live.

In my room I uncrated my laptop with high hopes. I saw all kinds of wireless signals around me and one wired connection to boot. I clicked on the first AP I saw. Nothing. An hour later, I was still unconnected.

By that time, I'd begged an Ethernet cable off one of the other residents. I'd restarted my laptop several times. I tried parading around the room with my laptop suspended in the air at odd angles. Still nothing. The air felt hot and still, vacant of whooshing data streams.

The time now ticking -- a full three hours behind my East Coast counterpart -- the sweat beaded on my forehead and the tops of my arms. I was on the third floor of the building, and the heat of the day had seemed to rise and concentrate in my room. The window A/C unit, a massive wheeled beast, sat in the corner of the room sputtering in cold air slowly fed by a wide-gauge hose plugged in the window. I felt woozy.

In my delirium I cradled my trusty cell phone, the Motorola PEBL U6, with its reassuring curved rubber grip. I thought of better times. Of Catherine Zeta-Jones on T-Mobile commercials. Do it, Stewart, she said. Make the call, I'll give you a good rate like you've never had before. I heard the T-Mobile jingle in the background: beep-beep beep-beep. Or was that the Nokia jingle? I was so confused. Why was it so hot in here?!

Finally I gave in. Dialing the ten digits like I'd never left American airspace, I soon heard my contact on the other end. I sighed and soon spoke easily and breezily. My worries about the Internet connection faded into the background. I found a Zen-like place, and the 2500 miles that separated me from her vanished, and thoughts of cost seemed inane.

After the call I lay back, smugly satisfied. Nothing to it, I thought.

[To the tune of Mission: Impossible]

Among the wonders of our time, one must be the ability to pick up a phone (your gum pack-sized cell phone will do) and call anyone almost anywhere in the world damn near instantly. Lickety split, it's faster -- and some would say easier -- to talk to someone halfway around the world than to nuke a bowl of ramen.

And just like a bowl of ramen, you might think that the specifics don't matter. Whatever phone (or brand of ramen) you use, the result's going to be the same. Same call quality. Same salty, vaguely bouillony taste. (That's the MSG you're tasting, by the way.) And you might think it's going to be cheap either way too. Phone calls and ramen are cheap -- why else would you want to live in the 21st century? At least this is what I thought before visiting Canada.

Back in July I visited Canada for a day and made a 15-minute phone call to the States on my cell phone. Oops. Ka-ching! That's the sound of the cash register at T-Mobile ringing up the cost of my call.

Lately I've been wondering how not to make that mistake again. I've been Googling upways and down, frontways and back, like Tom Cruise in Mission:Impossible before he types in "Job 3:14". And what I've been finding is a weird, wired world. One of quasi-laws and numbers that map to no physical locations. Untraceable cards and websites written in mangled English. The goal was simple: Call Canada cheaply. But now I'm watching my back because I'm afraid a SWAT team from a joint FCC/ATF task force is going to come take me away. I've started using an anonymizer to cover my tracks. I'm doubting everything I'm reading. And I trust no one, Mr. Mulder.

Cue up the music. I'm about to take you deep underground.

[To be continued...]

Outside Kroger on Plymouth...

New green springs from a empty post hole in the concrete. (You haven't caught me yet, autumn!)

Decision

I've made a decision about my future. It's not here. I start in November. I have to sell or move all of my stuff. I will say goodbye to the friends I've made here who are still left. I may shed a tear the last time I get on I-94 to head out of town. Being in Ann Arbor will cease to be the norm.

Yes, it seems I can list off adages all day. I should have been a greeting card writer.

Oh, I've forgotten to post some of the latest pictures from my summer. Here are a few.

In August I finally visited the northwest part of the state where lies Sleeping Bear Dunes. Rising nearly 500 feet into the air, it makes for dramatic vistas... and opportunities for ridiculous poses.

Here's your Blogger pretending to fall a long, long way:


You can tell this place was made for summer. You don't even need to face the water to see how. Face the leeward side, and you can see the attraction between land and sun. Tall grasses reach with fuzzy fingers into the sky:


Coming back into Ann Arbor, you see other signs of the last days of summer. Days spent quietly in the warm, sticky sun. (They're a little more contemplative now.) Soft nights that start at eight instead of nine. A bike or a run down a path you took earlier in the summer. A leaf on a tree that seems little less green. The earth curls into the decline of the season.