Lost and Lost and Lost and Lost and Lost and Found

Our last trip was a bit of a lost and found tour. Actually, it was exclusively a lost tour.  

Even the usually ultra-reliable LK joined in the fun most often reserved for me, as she began losing things left and right. It started with a sleep-deprived layover in Bangkok during which she failed to see that she left her iPad on the table next to her chair in the lounge. 

On our wine cruise I somehow managed to lose my Kindle while on the ship. This one is still a mystery since two factors are at work here. First, 5-year-old Kindles simply aren't worth stealing or keeping if found. And secondly, I am 99.9% sure I had it in our cabin. My only conclusion has been that I somehow threw it in the trash can when I was discarding the mountain of paper that cruise lines feel they have to give you every day.

On the Caribbean cruise, I must have forgot to pack the camera when we were leaving - which is why there aren't a lot of Christmas pictures from last year.

And that same day, one of our suitcases was lost by the cruise line when we disembarked and they were supposed to deliver it to the airline.  After more calls than I would have had the patience to make, LK ascertained that A) neither the airline or cruise line could find our suitcase and B) we were both pleasantly surprised to see how much our travel insurance was going to pay for our used tennis shoes and dirty t-shirts. 

Losing the bag almost looked like a profit center. That is, until a rather exuberant young lady from the cruise line rang to tell us they had indeed finally located the suitcase and were fed-exing it to us. Never have two people been so sad to reclaim their dirty laundry.

Even more so, I should add, when we discovered that someone had stolen a bottle of Johnny Walker Black from the suitcase during its unintentional journeys. Talk about adding insult to injury.

There is an upside to all this lost technology, of course. It must be replaced. Which means that LK and I are travelling with new iPads and a new camera. We are getting a new Kindle when we land in the US (much cheaper than in Oz) although I am not getting one since the iPad is plenty for me. I've even upgraded with a few accessories so I don't have to bring my laptop along and we have a cable that lets us get pictures from our camera to the iPad and - best of all - a wireless keyboard so I can write really long posts for the thousands who have the time and inclination to read them. OK, the 4 or 5.

But all of the above is just a prelude to the real story of this post. We left Hobart on Monday at noon, flew to Sydney and have boarded the Solstice to sail our way across the Pacific Ocean for 29 days. More on this trip in future posts, but I have to share what went on as we sailed out of Sydney Harbor on Monday night.

Watching the lights recede along the coast, I was fortunate enough to still get a signal so I could call the phone company and tell them that LK had lost her mobile phone during the travels from Hobart to Sydney. Given that it was on, active and missing, it was good news when the very attentive young man offered to suspend service and disable the handset rather than come home to thousands of dollars of someone else's calls.

And it was even better news ten minutes later when I still had a signal and got another polite customer rep - a young woman this time - who happily took the five or six minutes it takes to restore LK's mobile phone service since she had found the phone after a little more looking.

It happened, as you might suspect, because for better safety she had put it in a place she never uses. And it was only dogged determination that led her to keep looking even after service was suspended.

It would be nice to tell you that this place was also where the iPad, Kindle, camera and Johnny Walker were, but unfortunately it's only a good story not a great one.  But it is encouraging as we depart for the longest time we have ever been away from home. For now I am pretty sure that while we may lose stuff, we're just as likely to find it again if we keep on looking.