compounding issues

I had purchased an international phone off of ebay before departure. It is a GSM system phone
which means it works everywhere but the US. Interesting that US phones don't work anywhere
but the US. I lined up a sim card and found the "best" carrier in NZ for value and pushed the
send button, no worky.  Frankly it would have surprised me if it worked not that it didn't. Turns
out that after paying for minutes in the store I had to repay again on the road. No wonder this is
the best carrier, they make twice as much money on their deals because they double charge.
I checked messages on the phone in the US only to find that the mail box was full so I sat down
outside the national museum yesterday and starting writing messages on my famous 3x5 cards.
Adjacent to where I was working there was a set up stairs that went down to an opening in the
plaza where you could come in contact with the sea. A nice touch, a restful place to work. As  I quickly
wrote on the cards and listened to the ever present messages I lifted my hand from a card with messages
on both sides and the wind came up and blew the card in the bay. At first I couldn't see it but finally
saw it floating in the water far below. Being fairly resourceful I thought "I can get that "so I went
down the stairs, climbed out onto the structure below the stairs and reached for the card. It was
still four feet below my reach. Mom joined me and still there was no success in catching the
errant card floating slowly out to sea. Ah, hah, I thought. I drew out my trusty camera and shot an image of it from above, enlarged the image and sure enough there were all of the messages I had transcribed.
I was elated. Then I read the messages in detail and they were the ones that were not crucial, just
the usual stuff,
Don't we love life on the road.