Living in the sticks..
Living in the sticks..
We live in an odd combination of Suburbia and The Sticks. We are increasingly being encroached by the trappings of Suburbia, in that in the last year we have had outlets of the following big-box stores built within 10 miles: Home Depot PetSmart Circuit City UA Movie Theaters American Furniture Warehouse JCPenney REI etc.
I can get to either a Safeway or a King Soopers within 5 miles.. I have a choice of about 10 fast food places within 4 miles I have a Starbucks that has openeed a mere mile and a half. A drive thru Starbucks, no less. And I have a drive thru liquor store that sells cigarettes cheaper than the nearby gas station in the same strip mall as the Starbucks. Interestingly, the two drive thrus meet at one end of the building, and I am waiting to hear about the speedheads and the alcoholics having a head-on there.
Yet my internet does not come in by a wire. I don’t have DSL, I don’t have ComCrap, I don’t even have DirectTV (although I suppose I could). My internet comes in via point-to-point wireless from a little ISP a couple miles down the road called Mesa Networks (except I just got a snail-mail that said they merged with another company recently and are now calling themselves “Skybeam”). I have an antenna on the roof that points at their offices a bout a mile and half north up the frontage road. They have an antenna on top of their roof to receive it, and by this manner I am able to have high speed interwebs. When it works.
When doesn’t it work? well it seems that point-to-point wireless has problems with leaves. Yes, the kind on trees. It is this issue that makes your cel phone not work very well while driving through deciduous (trees that drop their leaves, for those of us who forgot what that means) forests. For the first several years, the trees that have vexed me were on my property.
I live in a funky 100 year old farm house that was moved 50 years ago when they built the freeway. It is surrounded by trees, in particular on the north side. There is a 50 year old hedgerow which is composed mostly of Russian olive trees and red sumacs that have been allowed to flourish. It’s handy to have, it keeps the wind in the yard down, and more importantly catches much of the trash that otherwise would just get blown out of my yard once in a while. It’s annoying to see the plastic bags there, but I’m glad that things like laundry baskets don’t go completely away.
Last spring, I had my power company come out because the hedgerow had grown into their wires and were buzzing when it was humid or rainy. This provided a wealth of firewood that we have been burning in the firepit all summer. It also opened a window in the trees allowing a much less obstructed view of the ISP’s antenna. Big win.
Well, it seems that one of the companies between me and my ISP decided that they didn’t like how hot their warehouse got in the summer, and decided to plant about three trees to the south of their building, next to the road. These trees have been there a few years, too, and it seems that they have now reached about 20+ feet, and are about as tall as my ISP’s antenna, which is merely mounted to their roof.
I’ve already talked earlier in this journal about the troubles I went through with my ISP about these trees. (basically they told me that my internet problems were leaves in trees, and that it would stay that way until fall, when the leaves fell). Well, since then, my internets have been a lot more reliable, usually working just fine except when there’s a brisk wind whipping those leaves around, or if there is a rain storm.
IN the last 2-3 days, we have received 3-4 inches of rain. This is nearly unprecedented here, in what I call “the no-zone” because we hardly ever get any rain. It might be raining cats and dogs in Denver and Ft. Collins (30 miles to the north and south of us, give or take) but it can be sunny here. The last spate of rain had our interwebs down from Friday morning (necessitating a trip into town for work) until late Saturday afternoon.
I’m glad to have the internet, but it’s sure a pain sometimes.