I’ve been resisting it… The lure of instant access to email and the web. The electronic leash of a smartphone. I mean, I must be the only bona fide IT geek in the San Francisco Bay Area who still doesn’t have one, right? Add to that the fact that I am “text averse”, and I guess my cell phone should have a rotary dial on the front.

However, I have now come up with a really good reason to make the jump to a smartphone… A few weeks ago, I’m hiking out to Tennessee Valley Beach in Marin with a really good friend. We hadn’t seen one another in a while, so we are chatting, catching up, when suddenly we come around a bend in the trail, and meet several hushed, awed hikers, “Bobcat, there on the trail…” they whisper. And sure enough, there on a side trail, is a bobcat, hanging out on a Sunday afternoon, totally ignoring all the awestruck bipeds.

So, what does this have to do with a smartphone you ask? Well, everyone else has their iPhones and Droids, and is zooming in for feline close-ups. Me? I take a couple of very sad, fuzzy shots with my 1.3 megapixel not-so-smartphone!

This is only the 2nd bobcat I’ve seen in the wild, and all I have to show for the encounter is a blurry photo. So yeah,  that smartphone with the 8 megapixel camera? Next time I hike that trail, I’m going to have one with me, just in case…