When Can I Disappear into the Ether?

Somewhere in the mangle of a weekend of best-ever cab drivers, hideous road rage, insufferable deadlines, MMJ and a party I could not manage to leave, my buddy Jamie Leigh and I got talking about up and disappearing.

How would our worlds respond if any of us pulled up and walked away without notice?

How long would it take for people to realize?

Now, for those of you who’ve known me long enough to remember a time or nine when I just got bored with a party and walked out without a word, this might not surprise.

But it’s always tantalizing.

In a long-gone America, you could disappear easily into the frontier. Maybe an Indian raid or bandits robbed and killed you 100 miles from home. Maybe you found comfort in the view from Big Sky Country. You didn’t need to come back.

With identification so much a part of society, you can’t really go “off the grid” without some world-class forgeries in your pocket. Hell, for most of us, “off the grid” consists of turning off the cell phone for an evening, or not answering e-mail for a few weeks.

But in a way, the cell phone offers greater freedom – if someone did finally track you down, you could shrug them off with a simple “ I can’t talk. I’m finally about to get my seventh continent out of the way and once I get on the boat to Antarctica, cell towers become a rare commodity.”

The people at work would know first; more than one day without a call, and someone knows something is out of place. Hell, they shook off my diplomatic attempts to not have the stock office birthday gathering I had no interest in. They might give me a day, but after two, the hunt would be on.

I could dodge most others for a little while, but eventually my flight would be known.

Plus, Orange Fury would pose a problem in my case – he’s the worst traveler of all time, and how could I dump His Aloofness into someone else’s care without tipping my hat?

If I have that abrupt urge for going, I better walk to the car and take off blasting Neil Young’s “Albuquerque” all the way through a Texas night. Sure, I might tell work so my little excursion doesn’t leave me jobless upon my return.

Until I’m independently wealthy, I can’t completely disconnect, I guess. But I can dream.

And should I vanish for a short time, I really will come back – I lean too hard on my friends to go all Thoreau on everyone.