Reflections on things I've lost while travelling, Part 1

This week, a number of recently-released ex-IDF soldiers showed up at Neot Semadar. Like many recently-released soldiers, they're hiking the Israel National Trail, which passes by this kibbutz.
They're a good, hilarious bunch of guys. They love all the stupidest and most hilarious things about America, and that includes myself. One of them does hilarious imitations of the characters from MK 22 (a funny Israeli cartoon about the army), Eddie Vedder, and "Arsim" (the loud, trashy Israelis who most travellers only know as the guys who don't shut up on the bus). Another couldn't stop laughing during his first silent Neot Semadar meal. They're my kind of guys.
Another Israeli volunteer joined this week. His name is Benny, he speaks great English, and he's a big fan of Leonard Cohen, old Israeli music, and countless other cool musics that I too am a fan of. He's my kind of guy as well.
Last night, I, Benny, the Israel Trail guys, and Christine went to the island in the middle of the Neot Semadar lake.
Everyone else got there in groups before me, so I rowed a boat there on my own and in the dark. It was fun rapidly switching sides while shifting my weight around to keep the boat steady. I felt pretty rugged.
We brought both my ipod and Benny's, as well as Benny's portable, battery-powered speakers. We lit a bonfire. It was a classic 21st century moonlight get-together. I took nighttime photos with my camera's super-fast digital exposure rate.
We had some battles over the music. Most people wanted to hear chilled out folk and reggae. Christine and Benny's habit of selecting Radiohead created a tiny bit of tension, but most of their choices were good. I managed to both surprise and satisfy the crowd with John Martyn, and then gave the speakers back to Benny, who chose some good reggae songs as well as some Aviv Geffen.
It wasn't a dramatic night. It was a perfect one in many ways. As it got later, some people left on the boats. At about 2 am, we decided to leave and one hiker decided to put out the fire. We gathered our things and walked towards the boat.
We only found one on the shore. Four people got into it. "You can all fit," said the guy in the front. Some people objected, but we all managed to squeeze in. We all shook to get the boat down off the land and into the water. We floated a bit. "See, we're fine," I said, and then Christine screamed. I said, "No we're fine," because I only felt a little bit of water around my feet. That was normal.
The water came up over my waist and I heard everyone scream. As the boat became submerged under the water, I tried to reach for the shore, and realized we had made it pretty far out, and I had to swim. We all made it back in about 10 seconds. We'd all been totally submerged. Everyone but Christine was half-naked within the next minute or so. Benny's ipod and speakers were far underwater.
When I took my electronics out of my pocket, my ipod was making crackling sounds and my camera had its focus light permanently in the on position. None of the buttons worked.
We then gathered up the patience we didn't have, or think we would need before, and waited for the boat to make two trips across the lake, and then we all carried our freezing selves back to our beds.
The next day, we went to the lake again to look for several people's shoes and found them all. My ipod had stopped making funny noises and had completely died, and my camera was still in the on position. I took my memory card out and I'm thinking the pictures on it have survived, but I haven't found out yet.
When we went back to the lake at around noon, it had a distinct and almost annoyingly pretty look to it. The blue of the sky, the warm and thick beige of the desert hills and the island's ground, and the green of the palms all had the vivid yet blurry look of an overexposed photo. The colors were so bright that they overtook the shapes of everything. It reminded me a bit of looking at neon lights which don't form a distinct image. I'd seen this place in a daytime light that made it look dirty, and I'd seen it in an evening light that made it look serene, but I'd never seen it like this. It reminded me of a computer-generated image from the old computer game Riven. We all talked about how the kibbutz could make a killing if they built a "chill-out" resort on the spot, although that would probably kill it.
I noticed how close the island actually was to the shore, which made me realize how brief the wait for a ride to the shore actually would have been the night before, and also made me realize how far out we were when the boat became submerged. We were almost halfway across the lake.
Benny figured out which boat the six of us had tried to ride in. It was plastic and it didn't look like it could hold even 4 people, but in the dark, I didn't notice.
Several times during the day, Benny and I talked about the Israeli musicians he should play for me, and then we realized we didn't have any music.
It's always tempting to come up with reasons that justify why you do stupid things, and stupid things happen to you, and it's easy to come up with those reasons as well. But in this situation, I wasn't particularly drunk or high or tired or bored- none of the reasons why I've done most incredibly stupid things. But this was the kind of mistake I could easily make again. It just sucks that I lost almost $1000 of things that I use all the time.
The worst thing about losing important things while you travel is that it makes you care that you're far away from home and don't have all the money in the world. Being far away from home and having a low budget don't really matter when you have all the things you wanted to have with you. But when you lose some of those things, it takes some of the fun out of travelling. But I'll probably get used to my new lack of things in a few days. I just hope I find a good book to read the next time I get on a bus, a cool person to let me use their camera in Jordan, and good music on El Al's radio station during the flight back.