In early August, I took my first "off the grid" vacation since 2002, when I went to Mexico for an abbreviated honeymoon.

This time, the trip was to the polar opposite - literally. North of the Arctic circle, on an island in a lake in Norway where electricity was provided by a single solar panel and batteries, the "loo" was an outhouse where you burned used toilet paper, and your carbon footprint barely existed because you had to bring everything in that you might use and take everything out that you might have left behind. To get out to the "hutta" (as they call it in Norwegian), you had to take a boat. A small one.

Now, for those of you that don't know me, some context: This is probably the least connected that I've been since I was born, and even then I had at least one cord.

Technologically, this was the perfect place for the MacBook Air. At a little over 3 pounds, good battery life, and razor sharp thinness, I could take it across the arctic wilderness with a minimal amount of effort. Its low power consumption made it possible that I might be able to power it from solar power, making my dreams of zero-carbon computing a possibility.

Still, my tech list was still pretty long, but I trimmed down to lots of other items to save weight and lower the risks of losing my data if the boat flipped over. Here's what I took with me:

- MacBook Air with Power Adapter and World Travel Kit
- Canon EOS 40D 10 Megapix camera with 28mm-135mm lens
- Apple iPhone (2G)
- Motorola Razr (backup phone with longer battery life)
- T-Mobile UK 3G Data USB Stick
- Jawbone Bluetooth Headset

For those of us tech-savvy frequent travellers, there's a pre-trip routine that's always a good idea. First, "pack" - make sure you've got everything that you need, including all of the power adapters; Second, "connect" - make sure that you're aware of the connectivity options and their cost for where you're going. And finally, "protect" - backup all of your data before you leave. Every single bit of it.

Before I left, I backed up everything on my MacBook Pro to a Time Machine backup (on Apple's Time Capsule), ("protect...check!") transferred over my essential files onto the MacBook Air, and packed everything up to go. ("pack... check!") Meanwhile, Øystein, the husband of my wife's sister picked up a Norwegian 3G USB Stick in Trondheim on their way up to the hutta, providing unlimited downloads after 5PM and 3G speeds for $30/month. Luckily, he was happy to sign up for a year's contract in exchange for getting three month's connectivity paid for. ("connect... check!")

I was ready for anything. Anything, that is, except for what happened.
For a few days, everything went really smoothly. Mobile phone connectivity in Norway is incredible. Most mountaintops have cell coverage, probably because there are always Norwegians climbing them, and a lot of the country is connected using 3G technology. The data speeds in a lot of Norway are as good as those in the middle of London. Access to the office was readily accessible, but not too accessible that I didn't have a vacation. The perfect vacation really.

But then I started to get weird messages on my MacBook Air, describing files not found and errors starting up. I was able to get around them using a variety of methods, but all of the clues pointed to a disk directory problem - a variation of a software error that is easily fixed using a number of different disk utilities.

The problem is that, as was well publicized, the MacBook Air doesn't have an optical drive - and to save on the weight (isn't that the point?), I didn't bother to bring one with me. In addition, I didn't have any alternate boot disks with me so that I could boot the system off of another disk.

Now with every other recent Mac in existence, I would have been easily saved. Øystein had a MacBook Pro, so I could have just put the laptop into "Firewire Target Mode" (reboot holding T down) and then plugged it into his laptop. My laptop would have shown up as a hard drive and I could have downloaded the disk repair programs that I needed from the office. And BOOM. Back up and running.

Problem was, the MacBook Air (as was also well publicized) doesn't have a Firewire port, meaning that attaching it as an external hard drive to your laptop is impossible. It does have a USB port, but there is no such thing as "USB Target Mode." So that method of fixing it was out.

And there were no local Mac shops in Narvik, Norway. Not even one within about a 10 hour drive. Forget about an Apple Store, they don't even have one in the entire country.
Well, I had a few other options. (1) I could remove the hard drive from the laptop and try to repair it hooked into another machine or (2) I could try to boot the MacBook air from another USB drive, which it does support.

(1) was out of the question, because as part of all of its innovative technology, the MacBook Air uses the same miniature hard drives as the Classic iPod. So getting an external hard drive enclosure that would work with it was an impossibility, and getting the adapters shipped to me would take longer (and cost much more) than I wanted it to. The local computer shops looked at me with blank looks, mostly a product of my lack of Norwegian language skills, but also because they didn't have the adapters either.

(2) was an option, but without a working boot disk for the MacBook Air, how could I get it to boot? Well, I eventually came up with a brilliant solution, which also didn't work. Both Øystein and I are enthusiastic amateur photographers, so we carry around cameras with Compact Flash cards, and I had a USB-based Compact Flash reader with a 4GB card. So, my logic went, if I could recreate a boot disk off of his laptop's OS components, I might be able to boot off of a 4GB flash drive.

Unfortunately, after hours of trying to copy just the right files to the 4GB card, I gave up, since it seemed that the MacBook Pro's OS didn't have all of the right components for the MacBook Air - or if it did, they wouldn't all fit on 4GB.

Giving up was hard to do. But logically, I had run out of every option - and every other possible method of fixing the MacBook Air was simply unattainable from my location.

Eventually, I packed up all of my 3 pound paperweight and went out into the 22-hour daylight days to enjoy my vacation. My wife couldn't have been happier.

What did I learn? Not that the MacBook Air is a bad machine. I love it to this day. But with its design limitations, you've got to be cautious. Even the most tech savvy user will still need a CD/DVD drive and some boot disks every once in a while. In the end, maybe I'll stick with my MacBook Pro for those big trips.