"Okay, Smart Guy..."

I hear my single imaginary reader say, "This Joel frood claims to live so f*cking far back in the desert that the coyotes need a map and a fill-up to get there. But he's on the Internet, using a computer he's probably got plugged into a wall somewhere. Ergo, he's lying."

My reader thinks he's so damned smart. Actually, though, it's a valid question - or it would be, if he put it in the form of a question. Let's call it a valid issue.

Okay: The first thing you need is electricity, right? Off-grid electricity is absolute simplicity itself. I know some cedar rats who actually use nothing but gasoline-powered generators for electricity. That's right, $699.95 and out the door of any Home Depot, no assembly required. There's a word for these guys, assuming they really need electricity. The word is "idiot." Because some of these guys really do need electricity. You can live without the Internet or a DVD player. Living without a well pump, for any length of time, is a little harder. But they do it year after year, and there's always a big panic when the generator quits. Which it invariably will, because those Home Depot generators with the Chinese engines aren't really all that. You shouldn't have all your eggs in that basket.

I've got (access to) an array of solar panels that feed a bank of 16 deep-cycle batteries, putting 24 volts into a big inverter/controller that cost like a Ferrari to install. There are cheaper ways to do it; there are also better ways. Solar is good out here, but the sun still rises and sets and moves about the sky with the changes of the seasons, and solar isn't very efficient in winter or the monsoon season. Doesn't work at all after dark. Piggybacking it with a wind genny is the best approach, which we'll do one day but right now I'm out here by myself and what the hell. There are some other changes that should be/will be made, but they're outside the scope of this entry.

Okay, says the imaginary reader; so you've got juice. What about the intertubz? How'd you wrangle that? Got a 15-mile-long telephone cord?

Actually this one surprised me, too, because I expected to throw the internet on the same historical trash heap that my television has occupied for years. It wouldn't have been so surprising if I were any sort of technology maven, because it's not new at all. But you actually can get a guy to come out to your place and bolt a big blue satellite dish on the wall of your barn, spend a bunch of time clowning around with a modem, and when he goes away you can surf the web like you were in your parents' basement. It is the damndest thing.