The Canada Plan

As we prepared to head for Canada several weeks ago, we had a communications plan in mind. First, we switched from AT&T to Verizon because Verizon has better service in Canada. Then the Head Musher contacted Verizon and signed up for the “Canada Plan”. In theory, this would give us unlimited texting and allow us to communicate while the Head Musher is out on the trails.

I like the sound of “The Canada Plan”. It has a ring to it. It sounds like somebody has a “plan” and it involves “Canada”.

Can’t you just see a bunch of Verizon executives sitting around a conference table congratulating each other on having thought up the “Canada Plan”?

“Yessiree, the Canada Plan has as ring to it”, they’d say.

“That’ll be our ‘Mission Statement’ for Canada. It’ll be ‘We’ve got a Canada Plan’ ”.

They print up little brochures in red and white lettering with maple leafs on them. They use phrases like “a new paradigm” and “Cutting-Edge, 21st Century Technology”. The kinds of catch phrases that chill the spine, numb the mind, and ruin the creative soul. They probably pat each other on the backs. And they do all this before lunch!

So the very first day we are in Canada, we agree that the Head Musher is going to text me three miles into the run, a simple “3-miles” shooting out over the “Canada Plan” and ricocheting down onto my iPhone. And then she’ll text me again at the half way point and give me an estimated time of arrival back at the trail head, another simple “eta 1:15” rocketing through the ether on the “Canada Plan”. This will allow me to run errands and get back to the trail head at the appropriate time. More importantly, it will let me know that she and the sled are still one; that she hasn’t run into moose or bear and had to use that new knife on any other living creature.

Well, the first day she sends me four messages one of which says that she took a wrong trail and will be 45 minutes to an hour later than planned. Her phone registers that the messages have been sent, but I don’t get the messages. She’s happy as a clam. I’m completely in the dark.

We should pause here and note that we don’t have a “Canada Plan”; we have half of a “Canada Plan”, the sending half. The actual transmission and receiving part of the “Canada Plan” apparently is still on the drawing board. Better change that mission statement to read “We’ve got half a Canada plan” and work on modifying those brochures to read “Cutting Edge 18th Century Technology”.

Now if someone to whom you’ve been married for 41 years is ten or fifteen miles out in the boondocks in below zero weather with a sled dog team and has missed two check-ins, you just might start to get a little worried, especially if she then has missed her trail-head rendezvous by 45 minutes. You might start thinking of various disaster scenarios involving broken bones, crumpled sleds and dogs running loose in the Quebec wilderness. If this person, to whom you have been married for 41 years, also happens to be a key member of your foursome in the annual, July 4th, Powers Invitational Golf Tournament, you might even start to panic.

Then my phone rings. My phone hardly ever rings. It rings so infrequently that I always fumble around trying to answer it. There’s nobody on the other end, not even heavy breathing. Evidently Verizon has half-a-voice plan to go along with its half-a-text plan. I like that kind of symmetry in a communications provider.

A minute later the phone beeps and I get a voice-mail from the Head Musher saying that she is OK but took a wrong turn and will be late. I immediately dial her back but can’t get through. No service! How did my phone just ring and I get a voice-mail if I have no service? And how do I have no service when I have four bars on my phone. That’s four out of five! The Head Musher, of course, thinks that I’ve gotten her four previous text messages and know what is going on.

She finally turns up at the trail head having covered about twenty miles instead of the projected ten. We compare phones and discover the extent of the texting problem.

Well, the text messages, having been sent around 1:00pm that day finally arrived at my phone the next morning. My phone beeped four times within a ten second period and there they were in all their splendor. Evidently, we’ve inadvertently signed up for the “Delayed Canada Plan” that has as its vision statement “You’ll get your text messages…eventually!”

Verizon explains this by saying that it must have something to do with the Canadians and their cell-phone towers. Just as I suspected. It’s those cagy, crafty, cunningly clever Canadians. They’ve placed a twelve-hour delay on all text messages sent by Americans under the “Canada plan” so that, if the U.S. ever implements its plan to invade Quebec, the troops will show up twelve hours late.

Verizon suggests that we contact the Canadian provider and ask them about this nefarious plot. But Verizon claims that they don’t know the name of the Canadian service provider. Well, this makes perfectly good sense. Why would the Canadian provider cooperating with Verizon on this “Canada Plan” identify itself to Verizon? Then they’d have to share profits and no U.S. Company would care about profit sharing. No, no, they would just let that unknown Canadian company pocket all the profits figuring that they would recoup the money when we implement the “Quebec Invasion Plan”.

Well we’ve had four or five conversations with Verizon. The last guy with whom we spoke agreed that “something is not working correctly” and launched a team of “troubleshooters” in the direction of the problem, whatever direction that might be. I have a vision of Peter Sellers in his role as Emile Floornoeil, Chief Troubleshooter for the Nice Telephone Company, speeding off in his three-wheeled vehicle and plunging through the ice into the Madawaska River. But, hey, I see Peter Sellers characters virtually everywhere. Not that that’s a bad thing. I find that it puts black and white human behavior into vivid color and makes life much more enjoyable.

We’ve noticed an improvement since Emile and his team have been out on the road troubleshooting. Yesterday, the text messages were only four hours late. We were back here sitting in the cabin having dinner around 6:30 when a message hit my phone that read: “eta at the trail head 2:30”. They’ve cut the time by two-thirds! New vision statement: “We’ll deliver your text messages sooner than you’d otherwise expect”.

Meanwhile, we’ve gotten charged $50 in “data roaming charges” when the very purpose of the “Canada Plan” was to eliminate roaming charges. Verizon has got the “charging-the-wrong-fee” part of the system down pat. Now if they could just get the “data transfer” part figured out.

I don’t want to imply that Verizon has cornered the market on incompetence. No, this time in the frigid north hasn’t derailed my ability to reason. I haven’t forgotten that the House of Representatives and the Senate, those two bastions of incompetence, are still in session. Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner still have the Legislative Branch humming away with the kind of incompetence that would make Verizon envious. But I do suspect that those three guys secretly sit on the Verizon Board of Directors and that Nancy Pelosi drafts Verizon’s mission and vision statements. The evidence is pretty clear. Verizon can’t be screwing this up this badly without assistance from both Houses of Congress.

Meanwhile, we’re heading to “The Outpost” for a cookout. I’ll tell you about “The Outpost” later. Here’s a picture:

Later,
The One-Man Pit Crew