I am back from vacation, hitting the ground running, with some days of Presentation Skills training beginning tomorrow.  “Regular” blog posts coming soon, but here is my last “vacation reflection” blog post.

We spent a chunk of our time in Red River, New Mexico.  My wife first went to this quiet, wonderful place as a little girl.  We watched deer from the bench behind our cabin.  We also went river rafting, saw Man of Steel in Raton in an old historic movie theater (with modern screen and sound), walked around the rim of Mount Capulin, explored a bit around Taos…   A wonderful few days.

But, back to Red River.  This was “roughing it” – no wifi except in the lobby office at the cabin (a walk away…), and very, very uneven 3G service.  So, I was essentially unplugged for quite a few days.

And then, on one day of our vacation, something pretty amazing happened.  The story was that a fiber optic cable was cut at a park a relatively short distance away.  This cut all of the electricity throughout Red River, and a couple of surrounding towns (we were told).  Somehow, this coincided with a major disruption in Internet service — the wifi was down everywhere, just before and a while after the electricity was restored.  We were literally not powered, and not connected.

What did this mean?  Some shops closed.  The rest were too dark to shop in (except for a couple which cranked up their generators).  You couldn’t purchase items except with cash.  And you couldn’t get cash because the ATM was not working.

This was just one small village.  What if this happened in a much larger area – for a much longer time.  Made me think – just how vulnerable are we?