(written on the 9th from notes taken previously)
Veged out a bit this morning before making the drive back to Porpoise Bay, I think spending most of my time with my eyes glued to my phone, fixated on what’s going on in Iran.
Crazy times.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I’m… conflicted.
Maybe I’ll write more about that sometime.
I pulled into the parking lot that overlooks the part of the bay where I’ve seen the dolphins and stared out at the water.
Nothing. 😕
I waited and waited.
I texted the cell phone repair people because I hadn’t yet heard back about the replacement screen, and it had been 3 weeks.
I texted back and forth with my friend Malaki who used to work for me. He’s started a mobile diesel mechanic business in Florida where he lives now and is doing very well with it but had a client that started blaming him for things that he hadn’t even worked on.
There was a possibility he could have accidentally done damage, so I suggested that he simply fix the issue as a gesture of good will, as if he’d made the mistake.
Even if he hadn’t, my experience is that it’s better to appease an angry customer and then decide later if you ever want them again as a customer than to get a bad review over it that stains your reputation.
To me, the upfront loss of money and wasted time is preferable to the bad reviews. It’s crappy, but in my experience, it’s infrequent enough of an occurrence that sometimes it’s just worth swallowing. 😕
I think I continued to vege out on news sources for a good little while (generally, I’ll download a gazillion videos, so I can watch them, both when I’m out of reception, and so I don’t need to keep my car key in the on position to maintain internet signal [which puts me at risk of draining my battery if I lose track of time]).
Finally, I saw a dolphin! 😁
I grabbed my snorkel mask, put on my wetsuit and started to head down before remembering my boogie board, so I walked back up the hill, opened my van back up, pulled my boogie board from its spot, and headed right back down to the water.
The tide was much further in this time, which meant that there wasn’t any exposed sand to just walk out on into the water. All of that was covered by the higher tide. That left me having to sort of mini boulder hop to get over to a section of the beach where it was sand all the way in.
But by the time I got to the sandy spot, a place where I could actually safely get out to the deeper water without risking banging my feet and shins on rocks or spraining my ankle, there was no dolphin in sight. 😕
I decided to head out into the water anyway to be ready in case one showed up. I also hoped that maybe I could coax one in by using my thumb to make that squeaking sound on the board like I had done a few years ago that seemed to rouse the curiosity of the little hector dolphins and keep them hanging around me.
But… neither effort bore fruit.
Perhaps it was because the waves coming in were quite large? Maybe?
Last time they were playing in the waves, I think?
But nothing. No dolphins coming around to make a pass. No dolphins curious enough to check out the squeaking noise.
😞
I caught a wave and rode in and put my snorkel and mask in a relatively safe spot and headed back out.
I was the only person to be seen. No one playing in the water. No one walking the portions of the beach where there was exposed sand. No one fishing from the rocks.
Monday?
I headed back out on just my boogie board, eyes scanning the water in the hopes of seeing a dolphin-shaped fin.
I wouldn’t be too keen on seeing a shark fin. 🙃 I probably mentioned it as a gazillion times, but sharks are a constant thought in my mind when I’m out in the ocean, and even more so when I’m in water with low visibility because of the increased risk of mistaken identity.
The waves were big enough that I had to go out quite far to get past them, which I did once or twice before finally giving up.
I tried to ride some waves before giving up on that as well and just heading in.
I continue to be amazed by how lucky Chase and I were last time to have had the experiences that we did. We saw and experienced so much in those two short months. We had great weather so much of the time.
For whatever reason, I wasn’t as cold today as I was yesterday. Even out in the water, I remember thinking to myself that I was oddly warm. 🤔
It was nice, though, as I didn’t have to work so hard to get myself warmed back up.
Is it just the density that makes it so water strips the heat from you faster than air?
That’s what would make sense to me, but I don’t have reception right now, so I can’t look it up. 🙃
I continued to vege out, mostly on Iran stuff I think, before heading back for a third night to the Cliffs at Fortrose.
The phone repair guy that I’d been interacting with sent me a message telling me to call and text the guy in charge continuously from a different phone number.
That basically tells me that the guy is not going to take responsibility and doesn’t actually care about doing right by his customers.
Which also means I either spend my time and money driving all the way back to Christchurch and fighting them about it in the hopes of getting a refund and hopefully preventing others from facing similar issues, or I eat the $180ish dollars, leave bad reviews, and forget about it.
It’s hard for me to forget about injustice. 😠
I don’t have a different phone number, so the only thing I can really try for now is calling and texting again. I don’t want to jump the gun and give bad reviews right away. I’ll at least give him some more time to reply back, and then… we’ll see.
I’m the kind of person who would rather be inconvenienced if it means being able to put a stop to injustice for someone else down the line… so I’m contemplating driving back and spending a day letting every customer who comes to the store know exactly what they’ve done to me.
I don’t like people getting away with ripping other people off.
Anyway, I spent the rest of the night either staring at my phone screen or at the sunset.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 