I’m currently on Day 3 of a social media fast. (Not exactly by choice…)

Last Friday night, I had a dinner date. My life isn’t always this glamorous, but he picked me up for the date in a two-seater airplane. We flew over farmland and water, into the mountains to his friend’s house in a more remote part of Idaho. We literally parked the airplane on the front lawn!

Flying to dinner isn’t a regular occurrence for me, so I was pretty stoked to snap a few pictures and share with my friends. My iPhone has over 4,000 photos on it, none of which are on the cloud because I’m a little confused by technology and not too comfortable putting all my private pictures and information in the outerspace of the internet. This will turn out to be a mistake 😉

We left the friends house just before golden hour to fly home. Rather than straight-shooting it back to the airport, we decided to glide around the local mountains and fly over the beautiful landscape with antelope, mustangs, deer and cattle. It was so picturesque, I took my phone out to try to capture the lighting and the view.

In such a small airplane, you can slide the windows completely open and feel the breeze. I stuck my hand with my phone out the window, and before I could even realize it the phone was swept away in the powerful wind. Down into the mountains it fell. My stomach sank because I realized that it was impossible to retrieve. I had just let go of every contact and every photo on that phone.

My replacement phone is en route now, and should arrive at my house by Tuesday. In the meantime, life without a smart phone is showing me just how much I rely on it! No Spotify in the car, no Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest to entertain me. No My Fitness Pal or Garmin Connect to track my food and fitness. No alarm clock, no Google Maps, no Chase Bank alerts. No calendar reminders. No Uber or Lyft.

Knowing that its temporary makes it totally doable and I’ve welcomed the break from scrolling through social media. I spent the majority of the weekend out and about anyways, without much time to even miss having a smart phone at all. We went to the county fair on Saturday night to watch the country concert, ride the ferris wheel, and share a deep-fried PB&J.

But the timing of it – I lost my phone and all of my photos (remember I said I don’t use the cloud? Regretting that decision now…) on the very same day I launched this blog! All I can do is laugh at my clumsiness and not make that mistake again. Note to self: keep hands and legs inside the moving aircraft at all times.

All of this is a long-winded way of telling you that the original post I had planned for today will be postponed until I get back as many photos I can later this week!