I hate those words.  I’m on my way to an event in the mountains where, rather than staying in a hotel with wifi or ethernet broadband internet, they’ll have me holed up in a cabin with no connection to the outside world.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, I won’t be able to bring my trusty Apple Powerbook for even the occasional Starbucks net fix.  A whole weekend, disconnected?  Not a nice prospect.  No Skype calls, no email, no videoconferencing, no RSS reading, no blogging, no internet radio, no iTunes, no arbitrary checking of my calendar or fiddling with audio for my show.  And what if I need something, to find something out?  What if I want to share some music or photos, or a great article?  How will I know my bank account balance or the amount of my car insurance deductible? What if socialising in the mountains is so terrible that I feel the urgent need to escape into Facebook or a web forum?

This is a matter of survival.