I’ve always said that the best stories are found between the pages of a passport. In the last few months, I’ve been trying to fill my passport story book with as many pages as possible. I was home for only a month, after spending three glorious months on the coast and slow camping my way back home, before I left for the camarque region of France. I’ve been to northern France before but the south of France is an ENTIRELY different experience. I liked the people, the food, the entire ambiance so much better. Best of all, I got to photograph the beautiful wild, white horses of the camarque. Then, home for a few weeks and now I’m on a 15 hour flight to Seoul, with a 6 hour layover, and then a 5 hour flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Sounds brutal but there was a time when a trip like this would have taken months. I’m so thankful that I live in an era where I can travel the globe in my lifetime!
So, here’s the story that is now bookended in my passport between my trip to France and my trip to Vietnam. I arrived at my local airport, knowing I had a long two days of travel ahead of me. I approached TSA methodically. I put my watch and iphone in my jacket pocket and folded the jacket into the bin. Took my laptop, ipad, and toiletry bag out of my carryon and put those in the bin. I then proceeded to the line that was entering the metal scanner. As always, my titanium knee replacement set the alarms blaring and I was directed to another line where I would receive the TSA pat-down. No surprises thus far - this was my usual travel pattern. What I did NOT know is that a TSA agent trying to make room on the conveyor belt going through the x-ray machine had inadvertently knocked the bin containing my personal items to the floor. He retrieved everything but little did he know that my watch was sending a message “it looks like you’ve taken a hard fall. Do you need emergency assistance?”
The default of the safety feature is that if I don’t cancel the emergency call by pushing a button on my watch, it will automatically contact EMS with my location AND it will notify the people I have designated as emergency contacts that I have taken a fall and EMS is on the way.
Wonderful safety system! I have inadvertently set the system off before when I was wearing my watch and banged my arm accidentally but all I had to do was click the response - “I’m fine. I did not take a fall.” Easy peasey.
But in this case, my watch and I were separated. The line was long and I had to wait for my TSA pat-down. So, my watch - failing to get the all clear signal - had notified all my designated emergency contacts that I was in trouble AND notified EMS who headed to my geographical location, based on the information my watch was continuing to send them.
Of course, in the meantime, my camera bag had been designated as requiring a personal investigation so I stood by while TSA unpacked all my camera gear and dusted all my lens and batteries for ?gunpowder? residue. I could hear my phone ringing in the bin beside my camera bag but TSA was ignoring it and I couldn’t get to it until they gave me the all-clear.
FINALLY! I retrieved my camera bag and repacked it while glancing at the multitude of missed calls on my phone screen. Just as I shouldered my repacked camera bag and was ready to attend to my phone, I heard my name being called in the airport overhead intercom. DIANA DAVIDSON PLEASE REPORT TO ANY OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE!!!
Unfortunately, it was an evening flight and the airport gates were starting to close down. I had to walk a bit to get to a gate that had an airline representative. In the meantime, I continue to hear my name being called overhead.
When I finally found an airline representative, he called the security office. Apparently, there was an ambulance in front of the airport looking for me. When they arrived, they told the airport police that I had taken a crash and needed emergency services but the signal was coming from past the TSA security checkpoint. So, the helpful police had notified airport personnel to be on the lookout for a fallen, possiby unconscious, woman somewhere in the gate corridor.
We finally got everything cleared up. I expressed my profound gratitude to the EMS driver and apologized for abusing his time. He laughed, said no problem, was actually relieved that he wasn’t needed, and said it was a story he would be telling for a long time.
Of course, in the meantime my designated emergency contacts were frantically trying to reach me. After EMS departed, I called them to say it was a false alarm. I shared the story and we laughed about it. Unfortunately, what I didn’t realize is that I actually had to toggle this safety feature of the phone off and then back on to cancel the SOS. So, while I was flying to Atlanta, my designated emergency contacts (and the poor EMS crew!) continued to receive messages that I had taken a fall along with my moving location.
When I arrived in Atlanta and saw what happened, I googled “how to turn off an SOS on your iphone” and promptly did what Google told me to do. All of this is to say - your iphone may save your life!…..Or create a story bookended in the pages of your passport :)
Addendum: I have so many really sharp photos of the beautiful camargue horses galloping around me, splashing through the water. However, I am constantly trying to improve my photography and for me, the magic of these incredible powerful animals was when they were in motion. So, I was often trying panning techniques so that I could convey the horse’s movements. What I wanted were sharp eyes and blurred bodies. Mostly what I got was blurred bodies. Still, I preferred the dynamic blurred photographs over the sharp, still photographs. Each to his own, right?
So, I think this is an appropriate music video for this blog. The song was written by Michael Martin Murphey and is based on stories that his grandfather used to tell him about a ghost horse that could never be captured. I have found this song haunting from the day I first heard it. The solo piano intro is followed by the gradual colloboration of guitar and drums before the introduction of the soulful lyrics that tell a mysterious story. Just wonderful. Enjoy!
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