31–40 of 108 posts
Or: don't take your rental car that relies on cell service out of cell range. Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?
Yep, I clicked on it looking for an article about pitfalls experienced by someone (or several someones) building off-grid housing. Oh well
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of, but it is the WSJ. Tangent, but it is interesting to me, how many people now seem to be unwilling to go out of cell range. It reminds me of people decades ago who would go camping, but only with a car. If you had to leave powered-travel range, they were out. This is less the case for me now, but there was a time when leaving my cell at home was a huge luxury. And I still enjoy days when I can go do things wi…
We just ran into this for my yearly Boundary Waters canoe trip where cell coverage is spotty at best if you're a couple lakes in. Some of our significant others, especially those who just had or were expecting kids, convinced us to rent a satellite communicator for emergencies. I get it, but part of the experience is being completely disconnected and knowing you're on your own if anything goes wrong.
I've done a fair number of non-trivial self rescues due to ice fall, rock fall, injuries, and fast-moving weather while exposed at elevation. I value self sufficiency and take pride in the fact that I have never had to press that SOS button, even under extreme duress and real objective danger.
That said, I do think intentionally refusing the carry a sat comm is downright immoral unless you tell SAR that you do not under any circumstances want a rescue.
SAR's operating assumption is that you will want a rescue if you are not able to self-rescue. When someone notices you are missing, SAR will begin a search. If you don't have a sat comm, SAR will have to waste valuable resources on a wide search and possibly even put SAR professionals at additional unnecessary risk. If the emergent event is the result of something that impacts a large area -- storms, earthquakes, avalanche, rock fall, etc. -- other people may die because SAR spent too much time on you.
To be clear: I won't judge you for playing life-and-death with self rescue. That's fine. We all play dangerous games and risk is highly personal. But at least TELL SAR the game you are playing! Tell them you do not want a rescue prior to starting your trip. Otherwise, you are not only risking you own party's life, but also the lives of SAR professionals and other parties who may need their services at the same time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair, sort of. I shouldn't blame the victim too much. That said, engineers have to make assumptions somewhere. I suspect remote camping trips are just too far out of the envelope that ZipCar was designing for, that envelope being cities. But really I'm just irritated by the bait and switch title, that to me promised a much more interesting topic than "here's a thing that can go wrong with one car rental company in si…
Isn’t the stereotypical use case for zip car to take it on a weekend trip out of town where public transit doesn’t go? National parks are very popular recreational attractions. Not to mention, there are plenty of places in cities without cell service, like parking garages.
That "lodge" the 3 girls had to stay in was the Salish Lodge & Spa [0], which is pretty damn expensive. I recognized it from a stay there once, it's a beautiful area, I think it was $300-$400 for the cheap rooms. Hopefully, these companies can figure out a way to prevent this, or to warn the users when they might lose access to the car, or else someday this will be a national news article when a whole family dies in…
Snoqualmie is 4 hours away from Forks by car, but the article says that it took them 45 minutes to drive back to the trailhead next day, so it must've been some other place. The photo in the article is probably from earlier in their roadtrip - if you're driving to the Olympic peninsula from the east, stopping somewhere in the I-90 corridor is natural.
We downloaded some shows from netflix before we went off grid so we would have something to watch in case there was some down time. Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.
That's DRM for you. Never trust it. Get a phone with expandable storage and fill your SD card(s) with GBs of non-DRM encumbered media and you can enjoy having it all instantly accessible to you whenever/wherever you want it for as long as you like. Control is what DRM takes from you, but we have the technology to take it back for ourselves.
I think I'm going to buy an old series Land Rover and electric convert it myself if that happens.
I'd like to learn how to take my cellular-enabled car off the grid permanently.
We downloaded some shows from netflix before we went off grid so we would have something to watch in case there was some down time. Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.
I had this happen before. I was able to work around it by switching the phone to Airplane Mode. Then it allowed me to see the downloaded content.
I laugh, but then again I recently lost my job a few weeks ago. Thought I would fly home to check-in with my mother and take a sabbatical holiday from the 15 years. I got out of the taxi, hadn't realised that my phone had fallen out of my pocket; ran for the taxi but was too late. The first feeling was anxiety. After accepting that, it was jealously. Walking past all the strangers in the airport on their phone while…
Sort of like being with your older relatives and seeing them easily fix an engine, manage without power, garden (edit: food and looks), or apply so many skills learned through necessity. Some of that is an independent attitude, especially prevalent in anyone with a rural background, which appears less prevalent with modern devices and helicopter parenting styles.