Remember when finding WiFi meant sitting in a McDonald's parking lot? That's where I was 8 years ago in Flagstaff.

That's what I was doing in 2015 living out of my Subaru trying to make freelance writing work. Every morning I'd park outside a diner with free WiFi and nurse a $2 coffee for four hours. The connection would drop every 15 minutes and I'd lose half my work because auto-save wasn't a thing yet. Now I pay $60 a month for a Starlink setup that works from a cabin in the woods. My van has a 4G router with a booster antenna that pulls signal from 3 miles away. The weirdest part is I actually miss the hustle sometimes. You had to plan your whole day around finding a spot with a strong signal and an outlet that wasn't broken. Anyone else remember the old days of hunting for coffee shops with acceptable bandwidth?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela4326d ago

I remember that library glare. The one in Durango kicked me out twice for "lingering" even though I had a stack of books right there. I got so paranoid I started timing my visits between the librarian's smoke breaks. The worst was when I found the perfect spot, a quiet corner in a bookstore cafe, and then they changed their WiFi password every single week and made you buy a new drink to get it. I'd save up those little paper slips like they were gold.

mark_cooper26d ago

Man, that takes me back. I remember camping out at a library in Taos for three hours just to upload a single photo to my blog. The guy at the front desk would give me the death stare every time I pulled out my laptop.