Nine
Days.

It was the last day of a week-long trip. Yosemite, the hiking, the mountain peak camping, watching the sunrise from somewhere we had no business being at that hour, the sunsets, all of it — one of those trips that keeps delivering no matter where you are. Lake Tahoe was the final stop. The last few hours before the drive home.

We were on the boat, music going, taking photos, soaking up what was left of it. One of my friends was looking back at a shot we'd just taken — you know how you do, that quick check right after. Another friend wasn't watching where he was going and bumped into him.

I saw the whole thing happen. Every moment of it.

The phone left his hand. Hit the water. And just went.

What hit me in that exact second wasn't sadness. It was math. Three months old, that phone. And nine days before we left for this trip — nine days — I had cancelled my insurance. I remember thinking I didn't need it anymore. I remember clicking confirm.

Nine days.

My friend reached for it immediately. Already too heavy, already too fast. The water at Tahoe is so clear you can watch things disappear. That's almost worse — there's no mystery, no maybe. You just watch it go.

The entire week was on that phone. Not just Tahoe — everything. Yosemite. Every hike, every summit, every sunrise we dragged ourselves out of sleeping bags for. All of it in one place, no cloud backup. I'd been meaning to set it up. I just hadn't. And it wasn't just the memories — important documents, files, things I hadn't saved anywhere else. Gone in about four seconds on the last day of an otherwise perfect trip.

I called my credit card company when I got home. They were sorry. They couldn't help. I called everyone I could think of. Nothing.

For weeks after I kept opening Find My. Not even sure what I was hoping for — that it had somehow moved, that someone had found it, that by some miracle it would reappear. It never did. That same phone I was still making monthly payments on, sitting at the bottom of Lake Tahoe, completely out of reach. I'd stare at that little dot and just think about everything on it.

My phone was IP68 waterproof. Didn't matter at all. Waterproof means it survives water. It doesn't mean it comes back up.

That dot on a map is why Floaty exists. My friend was right there when it happened — right there. If Floaty had existed then and I'd used it, he would have seen it the moment it hit the surface. He reached for it. He would have grabbed it. A whole week of memories, every photo from Yosemite to Tahoe, every document on that phone — still here.

I built Floaty so yours are too.