We are planning, if Mom feels good enough when the time comes, a week-long vacation in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin...one of the bazillion towns comprising "Up North", or "Up Nort", if you will. We are renting a cabin on Middle Gresham Lake, as we did for a week every summer when I was a youngster. It has been a dream of my brother's to go back there one more time as a family, so we will try.



It is quiet and simple there, and the world blurs out around you. A week without distractions, a week without communication with the outside world...a glorious time was always to be had. This time, it is different, though. This time, we have Miles.

I spent most of the morning delving into Sprint coverage areas, Alltel coverage areas, and regional Wi-Fi Hotspots. I hit gold with but one, a cyber cafe in Minocqua called The Caffeinated Internet. Their website is none too impressive, but that's coming from a jaded ex-graphics artist, so take me with a grain of salt.

"Are there phones in the cabins?" Miles asked on the verge of desperation. I shook my head, beginning to say that there are pay phones and you can always use the resort's "office" phone, but I didn't get the chance. "Outlets?—are there outlets so I can at least PLUG IN a computer!?"

"Yes," I snorted. "Though, I can't guarantee that they're grounded, so you ought to bring a converter." By the look on his face, you'd think that I asked him to relieve himself in a bucket rather than a toilet for a week.

Oh, wait! [insert fake boisterous laugh] That's what his mother wanted me to do during a proposed laid-back getaway (that we never took). She found my prissy bathroom standards altogether ridiculous and once asked me once on a laugh, "Well what do you think they were doing before they had bathrooms!?"

A half-heartbeat later I replied, "Inventing bathrooms."

I propose a cabin with running water, and he acts like I've stolen his favorite game identity. "You can stay home," I keep telling him, an idea which he emphatically rejects...and it is during these times, when Miles is fussy, more "hold me now" than "holier than thou" when I wonder how the heck he survived ten years as a Boy Scout.

They must have camped out in only the remotest of 5-star hotels, and roasted marshmallows upon perfumed 4-wick pillar candles in the lobby. I laugh at the imagery this calls, and he glances over, poised to ask me to check the Sprint coverage area once more.