AAAARRRRRGH!!!!!!! timing is everything....
Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 10:03 pm
Wife and I went paddling on Walker Lake (Mtn Meadows Reservoir is the official USGS name on the maps, but no one calls it that). Came around a point on the reedy marshy shoreline and not 30 feet away are two of the biggest sandhill cranes I think I have ever seen. They were half again as large as normal. The sedges were kind of tall, and we immediately went silent and still, just slowly drifting in closer. The cranes saw us (at least one looked towards us) but paid no attention, just wandering along the shoreline presumably looking for frogs to eat (a bumper crop this year).
I quietly and slowly reached down to my fanny pack to grab my camera. I turn it on and raise it to my face, zoom and focus. Press the shutter, and...
NOTHING!!!!
Batteries are dead!!!
I quickly fumble through my pack for the spare batteries. I insert the extra batteries and press the power on button, and...
NOTHING!!!!
Spares are dead.
After cursing at myself for not checking the batteries I realize I can rob the batteries from my GPS, turned off and buried deep in the dry bag.
By the time I do that they are gone.
Then almost like someone throwing a blanket over the lake the drift smoke from the fires at Antelope Lake just over Keddie Ridge from us settled down on us, obscuring the far shore where I parked the truck. So it's put the batteries back in the GPS....
Yeah, there's a lesson here. A lesson I already knew and always preach to others.
I quietly and slowly reached down to my fanny pack to grab my camera. I turn it on and raise it to my face, zoom and focus. Press the shutter, and...
NOTHING!!!!
Batteries are dead!!!
I quickly fumble through my pack for the spare batteries. I insert the extra batteries and press the power on button, and...
NOTHING!!!!
Spares are dead.
After cursing at myself for not checking the batteries I realize I can rob the batteries from my GPS, turned off and buried deep in the dry bag.
By the time I do that they are gone.
Then almost like someone throwing a blanket over the lake the drift smoke from the fires at Antelope Lake just over Keddie Ridge from us settled down on us, obscuring the far shore where I parked the truck. So it's put the batteries back in the GPS....
Yeah, there's a lesson here. A lesson I already knew and always preach to others.