This is a tale of my most recent excursion to the Arctic by boat. It sounded great, National Geographic trip thru the ice, and back with polar bears, and several other wildlife. It would be ice everywhere eyes could see and snow everywhere. Man-made machinery was designed to fight the elements and navigate through the frozen northern wilderness. It sounded like a magnificent task, an epic battle with the north, the weather, the pole.

I was told to take along all the tech I could fit into my suitcases. To increase the space I work in, I packed my laptop. I was informed that electricity was not an issue. 2 convert I was not quite sure what was in store for me. Just two days into the 14-day adventure I did not know of the fact that my Internet connection would not work and I would be gone for the following 10 days. It finally happened and I was devastated. Every travel, however far or difficult will result in a loss of connection from technology. There was not only unfinished business I had to address over the next week and I didn't prepare myself for the time of downtime.

These days , nobody is concerned about having to turn off their internet. Internet is accessible wherever you are. In case your connection at home goes down, you can always find a McDonalds close by and avail of their complimentary WiFi to access the information you need. You can bring your laptop to a Starbucks and make use of the WiFi free connection to surf the Internet whenever you want. The only restaurant or cafe that can help you up north. It's a long way to the closest generator which produces electricity. There's no free Internet around the corner.. There are only two choices in these circumstances: get a satellite connection or turn off the internet.

I cannot afford a sat phone, it is too expensive, and especially not to use for Internet access. I'll prepare an audio and video library for my next journey without Internet. The last time I had two songs, but they were both snarkily downloaded in the past the only thing I was able to listen to were three smooth jazz songs and one famous track I didn't even know the name. It's that simple. 4 songs over 2 weeks of no-things. If I knew this was the case, I would have prepared. I would have packed my laptop full of movies, TV shows, and a bunch of music videos. I could have spent hours listening to my favorite podcasts. It's easy to download them, convert them to MP3 format and save them to my laptop. I then I can sit in my room listening to all the stuff I enjoy listening to while at home, yet I seldom get time to do so. It was my"golden hour. Two weeks full of gold. It turned out to have been 2 weeks of looking at ceilings and running from passengers to catch them each time they made a sound.


It was empty both literally as well as figuratively. I've never been so bored. I was aware that the ice was thick and the boat had no other choice than to turn around and go back to the shores of civilization. Although this wasn't a surprise, there were many other alternatives. The hours and hours of downtime could be spent listening to podcasts and DIY videos for fixing issues at home, or simply listening music. Next time I will convert YouTube videos to MP4 and mp3 on my laptop, bring them along and listen to my most-loved songs from my laptop. Music never makes you feel down. Hulu, Netflix and other apps allow you to download movies and shows to stream offline. You can also bring them with you during long journeys in the Arctic. Make sure you don't get bored your time bored. Good luck!