Monday, October 27, 2008

olley, olley, oxen free

david and sarah recently bought season passes to seaworld. they only live five minutes from the park entrance, so it seems a no brainer for them. we have done enough talking about seaworld over the years to convince them that it is definitely worth the cost. yesterday was our first time to go to seaworld together.

after some dolphin feeding, aquarium fee time, a walk through the haunted forest; charlotte and david left us to ride the great white. the great white is a roller coaster full of too many twists, loops and general puke-inducing motion for me. they loved it.

after they rejoined us, david realized that they had misplaced their camera case. now if i had lost my camera, it would set me back a few hundred dollars. not nice, but not the end of the world. david, on the other hand, is a professional photographer and his equipment reflects as much. needless to say, he was not feeling enthused.

david immediately ran off to retrace his steps while i insured that the camera case was not anywhere surrounding our current location. it was not. as i hurriedly sought to catch up with the rest of our group, i passed a park employee. he informed me that the lost and found was located at the front of the park. good to remember.

we all waited for david to return from his search. after a few minutes he appeared and it was clear that he had not yet found success. i declared that i would quickly get to the front of the park and check the lost and found. after 10 minutes of "power walking" i realized that david was right next to me. we discussed where might have been the last time he had used the camera and when he for sure had it last. as we approached a food counter we recalled stopping there for a coke. jackson and i had quickly left the group, but they all sat on a rock wall for a few minutes. unfortunately we didn't see the camera case. when we approached to ask an employee, we spotted the camera case up on a shelf just waiting for us to show up. someone had turned it in.

as part of our relief, i was reminded of an experience i had with losing a camera. i lose things much too often, but this was ridiculous.

we were in the final stretch of a 10 day vacation to salt lake city. on the way home, we -of course- took the opportunity to spend a couple of days in durango. obviously we stayed at the strater. on our last full day in town, we spent a large part of the day walking up and down main avenue. somehow the endless surveying of the shops in town wasn't much of a chore. jackson and i were busying ourselves with taking pictures of everything that interested him. the beauty of digital cameras is that we can take all the pictures we want without being compelled to pay for the printing of all these photos. it was only when jackson decided he was ready for the camera again that i realized that i was no longer holding it. panic.

we had taken hundreds of pictures on our trip and i was saddened to have risked losing them all. we rushed up the street stopping in every store we had visited, each bench on which i had sat, and at every vista from which i could remember taking a picture. nothing.

in near resignation, we slumped back south on main when a man with a strong chinese accent stopped me and asked if he was holding my camera. to my surprise he was. he said he had found it when he walked out the front door of his restaurant. he looked at the pictures of our family contained inside and started watching for us. i couldn't have been happier. after thanking him profusely, we decided to pay him back by dining in his restaurant that night. it wasn't great, but it was worth it.

with the disaster resolved, we slept well as we prepared for the drive home. i packed the car as charlotte and jackson finished breakfast. with everything arranged, we were on our way. it is a familiar drive from durango south through new mexico. aztec, bloomfield ,chaco canyon, and cuba are all so familiar to me that the miles seemed to pass without notice. i sure noticed when we were about 20 miles out of albuquerque.

my cell phone rang and to my surprise, it was the front desk at the strater. my first thought was that i had forgotten to pay. no. that wasn't it. it seems that one of their patrons had found a camera in the parking lot and turned it into the hotel staff. upon looking through the pictures in the camera, we were recognized. i am pathetic.

i have not lost a camera in the time that has passed, but i am more prepared for the inevitable. now the first photo on our camera is always a picture of our computer screen showing a document detailing my name, address and phone number. you might as well be prepared.