Strange Clara BW load error and half-factory reset issue

I have a strange issue that came up when recently I was traveling without internet and wanted to see if anyone else had had it.

I turned on reader as usual, clicked on a book but the kobo said it couldn't load it, "try syncing online". I had zero internet (was camping in fact) and tried some other books and all had the same error.

Thinking it was some temporary bug, I held the power button til it power down, then powered up. Holy &*#&$, now it acted as if I had reset it and asked me to log into a wifi network to activate. Again, I am camping in the mountains and have no connection. I was mighty pissed let me tell you.

After trying to no avail, I connected the kobo to my phone and mounted it and lo and behold all my books are there, no issue. I copied a couple of my books to my android phone and luckily I had librera installed, and read there.. An inferior reading experience but thank god I had it for the 2 hours of pre-sleep inside the tent.

Then just got home, went through the kobo activation (again, it was as if it was a factory reset) and got back to the homescreen, and ALL MY CONTENT IS THERE, including settings (like dark mode)!

My questions.. What the hell happened here... How can I "re-activate" my kobo in the future if I'm totally offline but have an android phone where I can mount it (eg can I delete or add or edit a file on the reader that would kick it out of this stupid ass activation screen)?

Thanks for any input, insights or thoughts!