First of all, leave the cable modem at home. Your cable modem will not work in other cable systems. Each cable modem has to be 'provisioned' (registered) with the local cable system. Even if it is owned by the same company. Forget about plugging your cable modem into a hotel room cable TV connection.

There are however a few things you can do to get to your e-mail while on the road. If you travel with laptop, make sure you got a working dialup modem. You will need to signup with a dialup ISP. Only very few cable companies offer a dialup number for travelers.

Next, figure out how to get to your e-mail. E-mail is handled by two servers. One is called the 'POP' server. It is used to read mail. The second one is called the 'SMTP' server. It is used to send mail. You will only be able to use the POP server while logging in from another ISP. The SMTP server will be locked for you. You need to use the SMTP server of the dialup ISP. But that is usually no problem. Just make sure the reply-to address is not changed by the ISPs SMTP server, so people that reply will reply to your main address.

You may find, that your e-mail software is setup to use a host name like 'mail' for it's pop server. This will not work when connecting from another ISP. You need the 'Full Qualified Domain Name' (FQDN). It should include your ISPs domain name (e.g. mail.city.home.com ...). Everything with less than two '.' is probably not sufficient.

Then there is of course Webmail. (Yahoo Mail, Excite Mail, Hotmail and many more). They are great if you don't carry your own laptop but if you need to use somebody's PC. Make sure you select the option not to delete your mail after downloading it from your cable ISPs POP server. This way, you can still download the mail to your main computer after returning home.

Most importantly: Whatever method you use, test it before you leave. Information like POP server name, account passwords and such can be hard to come by while on the road.