THE PHONE NETWORK SUCKS

Today begins my drive from Regina to San Jose, with a stop in Portland along the way. I told my father this morning that I'd call him once I crossed into the USA, and I wanted to call Jodie in Ontario before it got too late there. But I can't. I had some initial failures:

My Canadian mobile phone (a Saskatchewan-number Virgin mobile) doesn't work in the USA at all. Something about roaming and pay-as-you-go not being buddies.

My USA mobile phone (an Oregon-number Virgin mobile) didn't have power all day, since I don't have a car-charger for it. Once I got to my hotel in Butte, Montana, I find out there's no Virgin service in this city.

Then I got crafty:

I tried using the hotel phone and its accompanying super-expensive rates. But guess what? It won't call Canada. I follow the instructions, no go. Not even for collect or credit-card calls. Sucks to me.

I went out to my car and grabbed my Vonage VOIP phone. I plugged that into the hotel's free Internet service. I'm so clever I think to myself as I bring in three A/C adapters and six wires to hook up a mini-LAN in my hotel room. But I set it all up, no success. The error message on the phone says No Line, so it's not getting a connection.

My laptop does get Internet in my hotel room, so I decide to try Skype. But I need to add money to my "Skype-out" account to do that, and it won't let me register to do that. What the fuck.

So I'm sitting in my hotel room, starving for access to the telephone network. This sucks! I guess I'll go get some pizza and try at it again later.