Touring the Information Superhighway

Web posted November 8, 1998

The Washington Post

Perturbations, pleasures and predicaments on the I-way:

Do you like being alone? Tired of being a team player or a cipher in a mass market society? Join Club Recluse, the hyper-secret organization that guarantees you'll never meet another member of the club since members promise never to reveal club affiliation and there are no meetings.

Join by e-mail ($19.98) and you'll get a copy of the Club Recluse Handbook, a membership certificate and discounts on merchandise -- a hat and a T-shirt. In case you don't know if you're a loner, take the handy quiz. This club isn't for people who are afraid of being alone; it's for those who celebrate solitude.

Composed in stylish white font set on a black background illustrated with black and white photographs, the site is an entertaining graphic interlude in the pulsing bad taste and garish color that emanates from most of the Web. With faintly European diction and grammatical slips, the text almost convinces that the Belgian Baron Otto Von Tu in his elaborate Manhattan penthouse far from ``noisesom mob'' is a real person. ... Alone, of course.

-- L. PEAT O'NEIL, oneilp@washpost.com
GETTING THERE: http://clubrecluse.com

For tourists and residents alike, one of the Washington area's attractions is the brilliance of the fall foliage. You can use the Web to plan a trip to take advantage of this splendor.

Start with the National Park Service site for basic information about Shenandoah National Park (www.nps.gov/shen/). Find scheduled hikes at the Northern Shenandoah Valley Chapter of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (patc.simplenet.com/nsvc.html) or the Capital Hiking Club (www.teleport.com/~walking/chc.shtml) pages. If you plan to stay a few days, nearby B&Bs are featured on the Bed and Breakfast Guild of Rappahannock County, Va., site (www.bnb-n-va.com/).

While no Web site gives you information about peak fall color times, the Washington Post's site gives you a list of phone numbers you can call for this information (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/outdoors/fall/dialleaf.htm). One of the recordings reports that the lower elevations are still vibrant with color, and the mid-elevations are ``still pretty.''

-- SARAH STAPLETON-GRAY, sarahkg@usa.net

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