Disruptive Telephony

Note to self: Blackberries don't like water!

Last Friday, I took most of the day off as vacation so that we could leave early to go camping for the weekend.  I did work for an hour or two in the morning and so I had my old Blackberry 7290 clipped to my belt when we drove off to Little River State Park in Waterbury, VT.  We set up our camp site and then drove down to the boat launch to put our tandem kayak in the water.  We got the boat all ready, moved the car up to the parking area some distance away and were basically ready to go.

It was then that I noticed the Blackberry was still on my belt.  Eager to get on the water and not really wanting to walk all the way up to the parking area to put the BB in the car, I said "Okay, no problem, I'll just put the BB in the small waterproof 'dry bag' fanny pack where I keep my wallet and digital camera."  I've been using this particular dry bag for years and never had any problems with it.  It's been a great way to bring a camera along and take pictures while out on the water.  So I thought absolutely nothing of adding my BB into the bag.  I've put previous phones into it and never had a problem with things getting wet.

Well, before we even left the shore (and I was not even all the way in the boat) we had to deal with the large wake of a power boat that came by very close to the shore.  Suffice it to say we had to pull the boat out of the water and empty water out of it (but not all got out, of course).  We got underway, were out for about 3 hours or so, had a wonderful time out on the water, saw a family of 4 blue herons who were amazing to watch fly - and just generally had a fantastic start to our weekend.  We got back to the boat launch all in a great, relaxed mood.

As we unloaded the kayak, I picked up the dry bag and noticed that the bottom of it felt... well... "squishy"!  I opened up the bag, turned it sideways... and poured out a good bit of water!

Oops!

Yes, indeed, the Blackberry was dead.  So was my favorite Canon digital camera that I've come to absolutely enjoy. My wallet was soaked... printed pictures were ruined.  All in all, a complete mess!  I took everything apart, tried to dry it out, but 48 hours later back at home both the BB and the camera were still bricks.  I don't know what happened to the dry bag, but it would definitely seem that I need to look at getting a new one.

The only good news, I guess, was that I was in the process of getting this Blackberry replaced but didn't yet have the new one.  So this particular BB was already on its way out.... I just would have preferred if it could have stayed around until the new one arrived. (Especially since I was flying off to this conference I'm at on Sunday afternoon!)

Needless to say, after using a Blackberry daily for something like two years now, and using it especially during travel, it's been very strange to be so "disconnected".  I'm unhooked.  Offline.  Unable to simply send/receive email.   Little things, like connecting with colleagues at a conference - or finding out which session they are in - become so much harder when you can't simply send email (since we all use Blackberries).  It's been quite an interesting experience to see how much the BB has really become part of my daily work flow.

In theory, the new one will arrive here at the hotel sometime today and I'll be able to return to my crackberry addiction.

Needless to say, I assured our corporate IT department that I will keep this new one far away from water!  (In fact, it will probably stay at home as there's really no need to have it while camping!) 

The camera, well, that's another case.... it looks like I'll have to be buying a new one when I get home...