The flight of the SD card

My little nest in business class

Inconsistent could be my middle name. After three posts from Down Under that were fairly close together, I’ve been silent for a long time. It was a great trip and I got caught up in the daily adventures. As I get older, I find I have less stamina than I once had and a number of times during the holiday I went to bed at 8:30 or 9:00 which is unheard of for me. So, thanks to those of you who have gently reminded me that I haven’t posted for a while and you’re waiting. Many of you will already know this story so feel free to skip this and wait for the next post. No promises on when or what. When I make those predictions I don't seem to follow through.

We went to NZ and Australia business class. We decided that on a flight of 13 ½ hours it was worth trading some bucks for relative comfort. It was absolutely worth it! Instead of arriving exhausted we looked at each other and acknowledged that the flight hadn’t been that bad and we weren’t as tired as usual. It was still 4 a.m. local time when we arrived, and we weren’t exactly kicking up our heels. Still it was worth the money.

The thing that has stuck with me most about the trip is the loss of the SD card containing all of the images I shot on my mirrorless camera. It was on the way back and I thought I’d get ahead of the game and do some editing before I got home.  I used Richard’s computer and edited a number of photos directly on the SD card. I was trying to save work and duplication by doing it that way. I was absorbed in what I was doing and one by one the other passengers in the cabin had their beds made up and turned in for the night. I was about the only one left sitting up and I came to a spot where I had edited most of the parrot photos and was about to start on the photos of the boobies we saw when visiting the Great Barrier Reefs.

The birds were separated from us by a rope and as long as we weren’t stupid about it, they seemed pretty happy to go on with their lives and ignore us. I was kneeling in the sand about half a meter from an adult and chick.  The chick wanted to be fed and, I gathered from the adult’s reactions, that junior had already had dinner. The youngster was persistent, and I got a number of phots of it in various begging poses.

There were also terns taking off, flying and landing. When I wasn’t looking at the boobies, I was chasing the terns with my lens.  I was just as fascinated with the southern ones as I had been earlier in the summer with their Arctic cousins. I don’t know how long I knelt in the sand completely captivated by what I was trying to capture through my lens, but eventually Richard suggested that perhaps we should go. I looked around and there were very few people either in the water or on the shore. I think we were on the last boat back to the ship.

This is a kiwi and it's stuffed but it's a photo of a bird.

On the flight from Auckland to Vancouver I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the parrot phots and decided to leave the ones of the terns and boobies for the next morning. I took out the case for the SD card, popped the card out of the slot in the computer, and was just about to put the card in the case when it slipped out of my fingers and down the side of the couch. In the pods there is a lot more stuff going on below the surface you sit on than in economy, motors to move the couch from a seat to a bed and electronic controls for the entertainment system.

In deference to those sleeping around me I refrained from letting a loud expletive rip, but I had a bad feeling about being able to find the card.  I put the lights on and then looked with the flashlight app on my phone while trying to move as little as possible hoping that the card had caught in my clothing.  I went through the pocket beside the seat, took everything out and then moved further afield. When I couldn’t see anything, I pushed the button for the flight attendant, and she looked. We decided to leave it until morning when a couple of other flight attendants looked and told me not to worry, that they would get engineers on board in Vancouver to take the seat apart and find my card.

You get the gist. The engineers arrived. I left my contact information and before we boarded our flight to Calgary a very kind woman from Air New Zealand called to tell me that engineers had worked for quite a while and didn’t find the card. Richard did his best to cheer me up and I went into the washroom and sulked. Not backing the photos up was dumb and I know better. In the privacy of the cubicle I did a fair bit of swearing, still at low volume.

Somewhere on that plane is my SD card

Now that I’m home and have had some time, the sting of losing six-week’s-worth of photos is not quite as acute as it was. Intellectually I knew the moment I lost the card that it wasn’t particularly serious – incredibly disappointing- but not serious. We weren’t hurt or sick. We didn’t lose our passports or our luggage. I had very much enjoyed taking the photos and I had gotten a lot of practice with my camera. Telling myself those things didn’t make me feel one bit better at the time. Now I can accept the truth of all that. There’s still a twinge of regret when I think of some of the parrot photos and I’m not sure that will ever totally go away. I used to tell the kids that the only serious mistake is one from which you learn nothing. I’ve learned that particular chance I took didn’t pay off.  I’m not sure how I’ll handle my photos on the next trip. I find manipulating them among various computers is awkward and I may just resolve to leave the card in the camera until I get home. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for more intuitive ways to handle my photo files while on holiday.

I do have some photos that I took with my phone. I used my phone when I wanted a wide-angle shot or when I was taking something specifically to put on social media. Having spent time with the bird photos, I have them in my visual memory. I can’t share them with you, but I can look back and enjoy the good ones whenever I want to. Things could have turned out much worse.