I've been having the same problem accessing github in particular. Just for fun, I opened the Opera browser and activated the built-in VPN. That got everything going again. At least for browsing, not so useful for my git pulls and pushes.
That would be very cool. However, when we need to get to Europe, we take a train to Toronto or Montreal and fly from there. Canada's airports are a bit more sane that those in the U.S. When I lived in southern California, I drove across the border and flew out of Mexico: not as nice, but I saved a lot of money that way.
Actually, I loved that section. I'm one of those "grey-bearded wizards of Lisp/Haskell/whatever" but I like the idea of becoming one of the "insane Erlang programmers who are content writing sumerian cuneiform all day long." Guess I'll have to learn me some Erlang.