Blog Lag

Is there any such thing as blog lag? I am now close to two weeks behind in my blogging but I hope to catch up in the next few days. It's partly the fault of my extremely busy days - I'm usually biking, hiking, camping and photographing until I'm too tired to reflect or write. However, I must also lay the blame partly on the atrocious lack of access to wifi in rural Newfoundland.

For comparison sake, I bicycled across Canada and the northern States in 2007, and access to wifi in Newfoundland is still well behind where it was in the rest of the country six years ago. Sure, you can often get wifi at the small town library or sometimes even at the town office, but libraries are only open a few hours a week, and almost never when I'm passing through town. In most (but by no means all) places you can sit outside and get a signal, but this only suffices for a quick check of the email - it's pretty awkward for uploading photos and writing blog posts. And, something I'm noticing more and more is that the small town library has moved into the local school. I just don't like this trend - I refuse to be that vagabond stranger hanging around the primary school.

Everywhere else in the world you can stop at a restaurant or cafe or truckstop and access the internet on your laptop. You can sit and have a meal while you get your social media fix or do an hour of work. How civilized! Sadly, this is a service that businesses in Newfoundland have just not grasped yet. This is yet another thing I will blame on the dearth of entrepreneurship in this province. It is the same reason every restaurant and pub in rural newfoundland has the exact same menu (potatoes and various animals deep-fried) and why they all make the same claim, "Newfoundland's Best Seafood!" It's a crappy formula that everyone believes works (though it clearly doesn't) so naturally it would be apocryphal to change it (though obviously it wouldn't).

Anyways, a few days ago I came across a Chinese restaurant in a very small town. It was good (though again nothing particularly unique or creative), but was such a relief from the daily regimen of fries and burgers that I ravenously devoured my very large meal without even the slightest twinge of irritation at the lack of wifi. So please rural Newfoundland, either get some better food, or get some better service, or, even better yet, break the mold that is forcing you to be a caricature of yourself.