I lost my phone

We landed in New Zealand early enough in the morning to be painful, bypassing doom, which isn't so painful, wandered through the airport, stood in a line, went through a security check, up a flight a stairs, and into a waiting room which was right above where we entered into the terminal. I was amused by all of the walking we did, commenting that we walked an awful long way to move 20 feet vertically.

Still.

Hello, New Zealand!

My excitement for my first time touching ground in New Zealand, even if we were merely passing through, was dashed, however, when I realized I lost my phone.

I remembered putting it in one of the zippered pockets in my backpack, but did not recall zipping it. I also remembered pulling other items out of that pocket, without recalling the phone was still in the pocket.

I started pulling everything out of my bag. Jonathan looked at me oddly, then asked what was going on. When I explained I had lost my phone, he suggested it was just in my bag somewhere. I handed him my bag to look, and went to the counter to ask the woman manning the station if she could ask the people on the plane to check for my phone.

The plane had been emptied and pushed back from the gate, moved into a storage area. She would have to send someone out to the plane to check for my phone. I asked that she do so, described my phone, left my contact information, explained that I was willing to pay postage for my phone back. She said she'd do what she could.

I sat back down next to Jonathan, and started to mope. Great. I wasn't stressed enough yet about my talk tomorrow (yikes! tomorrow). No, I needed to start this trip off on the completely wrong foot of no sleep and losing my phone. Great. Just great.

A short while later, we boarded the plane that would take us two timezones back in three hours, for a net one hour flight, and drop us in Australia. We were on the plane for all of maybe ten minutes when the woman from the gate came up to us. "I had the crew search the plane and the seats around where you were sitting. They didn't find the phone."

Shit.

I made some comment about someone else probably picked it up. I thanked her, and descended into more moping an a lot of gloom. I had pictures on the phone that I hadn't backed up. I had text messages that I wanted to keep. I had records and things on that phone. And someone else had it.

We took off, and at some point in the flight, I reached to get something out of my backpack.

To my surprise, my phone was in my backpack.

In my backpack, in the zippered pouch where I had put in.

Happy happy joy joy!

Though neither I nor Jonathan could find it, it had settled down into a fold in the pocket. I'm completely unsure how I missed it, though I feel a little better knowing that he had missed it, too.

And with that, yay! This will be a great trip.