At home and abroad

Steve and I are still alive; still in the Caribbean, but one reason I haven’t posted to the blog is that… I lost my iPad on the Arajet flight Tuesday from Santo Domingo to Kingston! At least as agonizing as not having my iPad is the fact that I had spent several hours writing a detailed report about our 8 days in the Dominican Republic. On the plane, I had copied that into WordPress (my blogging software) and inserted at least 30 photos into it. I hit “Save as a Draft” and WordPress informed me it would do that as soon as I was connected to the Internet again. But because my ipad is STILL sitting in the pocket of seat #30D of that particular 787 Max, it’s still not connected to the Internet.

Worse still, it looks like it never will be! I first got a message from Apple that my iPad was no longer with me when Steve and I were at the Island Car Rentals desk, getting our last set of wheels for the trip. I glanced at the message and silently chuckled. Oh, the dear little phone doesn’t realize the iPad is in its pocket in my backpack, just a few feet away. Then I returned my attention to the car-rental process.

I got another message when we were out in the parking lot, checking out the Yaris. Only then did it occur to me to look in my backpack, at which point full-on panic set in. I left Steve and raced into the terminal, desperately searching for any Arajet employee. I finally found a single harassed young woman, who was disappearing into the bowels of the terminal. To condense a long and tedious sequence of events, she eventually checked and reported that no one had removed the iPad from the plane, and the plane was on its way back to the Dominican Republic.

Arajet has a laggy, slow website that contains no phone number that works to reach an actual human. I tried. By the next morning, I was able to have an extended online chat with a “customer service” representative, who reprimanded me for not taking better care of my “personal belongings.” IF anyone ever removes that iPad from the pocket and turns it in to Arajet, I might be able to recover it by coming in to the airport and showing proper identification. (If I can’t do that: tough luck.)

Most maddening is the fact that my Find My app continues showing me updated images of my iPad at the airport in Santo Domingo!!! It’s there, containing all the work I put into that post. But I probably will never be able to get it back.

Meanwhile, I’m writing this using a portable keyboard connected to my phone. NOT the easiest way to compose. With this rig, I’ll try to report on some of our adventures in Jamaica. They’ve kept the adrenaline flowing, and I’m not talking zip lines.