Do you know what is the trouble with country living?

It’s not the pot holey gravel road on which we live. It’s not our looong pot holey gravel drive to the house that we have to plow in the winter. It’s not the wildlife that threatens our critters. It’s not the fact we’re four miles from anything.

It’s the lack of decent high speed Internet!

Time Warner says they want to charge a minimum of $3,000 to run cable to the house (there are four other houses on the road). Fairpoint says we are too far from any of their hubs to get DSL. We’re not within tower site of Axiom’s line of site wireless Internet. So we settle for WildBlue Satellite Internet.

At the best of times I have a connection and our family of three is pushing the limits of our bandwidth allowance. At least once a year the system breaks, the repair guy comes and we’re locked into another year’s contract (or pay the price of the service call). When the weather here is lousy, the connection is spotty. When the weather is sketchy in Texas where the satellite uplink is, the connection is spotty.

When I have no Internet I get cranky. I’ve been cranky the last couple of weeks. The connection has been spotty at best. Saturday, when I finally lost Internet all together (right in the middle of a big project), Paul dropped what he was doing and told me in a very careful, calm tone not to worry – he’d see what he could do. And he started cutting trees.

Yes, cutting trees to ensure the darned satellite dish had a clear view of the Southern sky.

Many of those Maples we tapped last winter are gone. Before this winter they’ll be cut for fuel for the outdoor wood boiler.

His efforts seemed to do the trick. I’m connected to the rest of the world again!

You’ve got to love a man with a chainsaw.