this week in the odyssey
6.7.99 -- 6.14.99
porto rotondo, sardinia, italy

Going

Going

Gone

Being an Extreme Telecommuter is all about staying one step ahead of The Man. You gotta fly under his radar. You gotta keep your ear to the ground, your nose to the grindstone, and your toes in the sand. You gotta get a Stealth Scooter like the one you see (but just barely) us riding in that triptych up above. Even its name is all hugger-mugger, sub rosa, spoken only sotto voce -- the Shh 50 from Honda. Would you expect Extreme Telecommuters to ride anything less?

Given that my cruising range on crutches was just slightly less than that of my two month old nephew, Calvin, in his jammies, the Shh 50 became our more or less constant companion for our week in Sardinia. Not only does Calvin get around better than I do, he's also cuter than I am. However, I definitely don't need to be burped as often, nor do I get fussy if I haven't eaten for more than two hours (and no fair asking Kristanne for independent confirmation on that point -- I said it, so it must be true. So there.).

Kristanne, however, can do lots of things that Calvin can't do. For example, have you ever puzzled over what that funny thing you see on the floor next to European toilets is actually for? The bidet? Sure you have. We all have. Well, Kristanne actually knew what it was for. Yup -- it's for doing your laundry. There you see Kristanne at left, turning her ideas into action. Kristanne is a very self-actualized person.

Thank goodness this hotel had a bidet. For four weeks, we'd only been doing our laundry in the parallel universe, bizarro washing machine that came with our second apartment in Rome. Though technically an improvement on the washing machine in our first apartment (that is, it existed), this one had the nasty habit of getting your clothes dirtier than they were when you started. It was a sort of socialist washing machine, ensuring a least common denominator of equal smelliness for all your clothes. In theory, this doesn't sound really all that bad. In practice, however, it means that every item of clothing smells exactly as bad as your smelliest sock. Depending on how strong your stomach is, you may or may not want to visualize (in an olfactory sorta way) what my dirtiest sock smells like. Okay, stop. And, now, let us give thanks to the bidet. Thank you!

As it turned out, the bidet ended up being pretty much my favorite appliance in the entire Sardinian apartment. Originally, I thought this would have been the telephone. After all, the phone was pretty much the exact reason we were staying still for an entire week instead of gallivanting around Europe. Crunch time at work was drawing nigh and I was going to need uninterrupted access to phone lines for long stretches of time to get my work in. "So," we asked the tour operator, "does the Village Green Park have private telephones with outside lines in the rooms?" You bet they do, step right up, sign on the dotted line, come on down. Not quite convinced, we looked in the Village Green Park's handsome brochure for mentions of telephones. Whaddyaknow, there they are! One per room, outside line, the works. Just like something from the 20th century! We're there.

Alas, in Italy, things are often not quite as they seem. Or, to paraphrase Frances Mayes, author of bestselling travel book, "Under the Tuscan Sun": "Italy's essence distills from a thousand crushed grapes and the tiniest sprig of wild mint clasped in a young girl's virginal hands. It's timelessness echoes in the soil and in the simple peasant garb of the wizened woman who gazes into my eyes with a look that bespeaks the secret knowledge of the ancients. So blessedly free of the guiles of the "modern" world! So attuned to the mysteries of beauty! A bell tolls, a cow lows, and suddenly I'm seven again, pigtailed and playing with dolls at my Father's bended knee. Ah, la bella Toscana!"

Hmm. I'm not quite sure Frances is really getting it there. Perhaps we should just paraphrase what I said when I picked up the phone and cradled its lifeless receiver to my ear. "Crap on toast! The stupid phones don't work!"

Yes, I do believe that's more like it. Sorry, Frances.

This was extraordinarily bad. Laboring as I was under a workload that would crush Job's back into jelly (question -- did Job ever have a job? What was Job's job?), I desperately needed unfettered telephone access. I needed to download, upload, bridge the communications gap. I needed copper wires, optical fibers, coaxial cables. This stupid hotel didn't even have two tin cans and a piece of string.

What to do? During times of crisis, I've discovered that it's important not to let calm and clear-headed logic get in the way of thowing a total hissy fit. There will be a time for rational analysis later. First, break something. Nothing big, maybe just a coffee cup or a hotel clerk's arm. Next, you'll want to move into bemoaning your wretched fate with keening howls of despair. If things still don't seem to be going your way, try setting something on fire, like maybe a couch or just a scooter. Burn clean your despair in a catharsis of purifying flame.

Kristanne, however, is not as avid a proponent of this system of crisis-management as I am. So, while I attempted to get the hotel desk clerk in my patented Grim Faced Hammerlock so as to squeeze some sense into his nattering skull (on crutches, no less!), Kristanne calmly apprised the hotel manager of the direness of our plight, informing him that she expected him to pay for us to stay at a hotel with a telephone until they fixed their own.

And that was all it took. The hotel manager, after peeling the desk clerk from my icy clutches, politely directed us to a back office with a working telephone where I could merrily tranfer my bits and bytes back to the waiting computers in California. That's me at left conjuring the Spirits of Dial-up Access (tougher than you think without a Ouija board) and celebrating their happy presence at right.

The only down side to this arrangement was that the hotel office with the telephone resided on an outcropping of alpine rock soaring high above the valley where our little room was nestled. So, twice a day, I crutched me and my laptop up a staircase of positively Himalayan proportions so as to get my work done. I did this with neither bottled oxygen nor Sherpa support (though I did have a small cache of salami laid in at a base camp about halfway up). Sir Edmund Hillary ain't got nothing on me.

"And what," you might ask, "did Kristanne do while you labored so intensively under the withering Sardinian sun? With what task did she occupy her daily toil?"

Hmm. Now don't get me wrong -- sunbathing is much more difficult than it appears. For starters, there's that whole "rolling over" thing that you have to do to make sure you get evenly tanned. There's also a great deal of arm flexion involved in the application of sunblock. Turning the pages of your book is no picnic either. You've got to be in some serious shape to be doing the kind of performance tanning that Kristanne is doing over there at right. And -- my god! -- what's that she's reading? No! It can't be! "Under the Tuscan Sun," by Frances Mayes? O, the unspeakable burden of it all!

You may wonder why Kristanne is not doing her reading poolside. There's a simple reason for that -- the pool is hell. If Dante were alive and living on Sardinia, he'd add another circle just for the pool at the Village Green Park. Starting sharp at 10 AM every morning, the pool staff (known as "Animazione") would crank up their supercharged stereo system with what would prove to be an unending cycle of the same 10 unspeakably awful Euro-disco songs cranking out of the speakers at a constant 140 beats per minute. Euro-disco might charitably be called music for aerobics instructors. Less charitably, it might be called complete and utter crap. Just to make sure everyone in the surrounding two-mile radius got the same experience pool-goers were getting, our Animazione friends kept the volume pinned right at the threshold of pain so you could really feel your tympanic membrame start to dissolve.

The pool staff all wore baseball caps proclaiming "100% Animazione." They were pretty much 100% a pain in the animazione. What few poolside stragglers they didn't chase off with the sonic assault were all forced to wear bathing caps before entering the pool. Should you have neglected to bring a bathing cap, figuring that most resort hotels in the business of selling relaxation wouldn't force their guests to look like idiots with shriveled condoms on their heads, the Animazione crew was only too happy to sell you one for a nominal fee. Then, just to jack up the surreal quotient for the whole experience, the Animazione creatures would assemble themselves into a dancing line and do these inexplicably lame choreographed dances to the bad Euro-disco as a group in front of the pool. The lead dancer even had a microphone and would croak along to her favorite lines at top volume. It was sort of like being in a car with one of those people who can't sing but can't stop themselves from trying while the radio's playing. Who finds this entertaining? Who wants six freakishly perky people in matching Animazione t-shirts and caps dancing group dances to Euro-disco to entertain them while they swim (I mean, besides Regis and Kathie Lee)? Is this a feature of the hotel? A selling point? Do they list it in their brochure?

Questions to ponder, questions to ponder. But first, I needed to break something. Or set something on fire. Or shave my head with a cheese grater while chewing on tin foil. Yeah, I got your 100% Animazione right here, pal.

All in all, though, Sardinia proved to be a wonderfully accomodating place from which to telecommute. You've got your sun, you've got your deck, you've got Kristanne to go and do the shopping, cooking, and cleaning while I win the bread. Well, actually, "you" wouldn't have that. Only I had that. And I only had that because I cut my foot. Kristanne is not June Cleaver (though she is considering a beehive hairdo).

Regular readers of this feature will recall from our days in Rome how Kristanne and I love nothing better than a good deck. Oh, we're definitely connoisseurs of the balcony world, paying attention to the details that can make or break a prime lounging spot. Our little apartment in Sardinia sported a humdilly of a deck, a nice four-seater facing straight west into the sunset. We got into a good groove where after finishing my work in the hotel office, I would rope up and rappel down to meet Kristanne for dinner. Afterwards, we'd put our feet up (check out the toes peeking up into the bottom of the frame in that picture below) and watch the sun go down over the bay and the Sardinian foothills beyond. Eventually, the stars come up and those need to be gazed at, too. Sometimes, this whole Extreme Telecommuting thing is really pretty cool. I mean, when you're not breaking, burning, or cursing at things.

And that's it for this Odyssey from several weeks ago! We humbly apologize for our backlog...events have been coming too fast and furious for us to take stock of them. That time is coming though...keep watching!

Last Week's Front Page Picture

As for that picture at left, no, your eyes are not deceiving you -- that is a blue sky you see over there. There's plenty of them on Sardinia! There are even birds and rabbits and plants and fresh air! After ten weeks of prowling the urban jungle, we weren't really quite sure how to cope with all that nature stuff. Kristannne even kept pinching me to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Though I'm not sure she quite had the whole concept right on that technique, it did seem to reassure her.