I took Moxie on her first Kayak run, and she did fine. At one point on quiet water, she jumped in and started swimming for the bank, but turned around when she found out it was farther away than she imagined! Natural learning is deep learning.
I drifted under a pair of Bald Eagles sitting shoulder to shoulder in a snag over the water, only to discover my camera had no battery in it! I dug out the spare battery, but it would not fit. I jammed it in anyway and the camera would not fire up. Da fuq? I put it away and paddled on.
At home I used a couple of knives and other tools to pry the fat battery out of the camera. The sides of the thing were buckled out. I assume it’s from the heat of the car. The good news is with a new battery insider her, the camera fired right up. Whew!
In the picture, the “bridge” in the background is actually an aqueduct carrying the C&O Canal over the Monocacy River. The full Potomac River is flowing parallel to the aqueduct only a 100 yards on the other side, but rapids on the Potomac necessitated a canal bypass on the upper Potomac, above Georgetown, during the very brief era of commercial water transportation.
This aqueduct was built between 1829 and 1833, is 438-feet long, has a 20-foot wide waterway inside, and is made of massive quartzite blocks cut from nearby Sugarloaf Mountain. During the Civil War, rebel troops tried to blow the aqueduct up, but they lacked the powder to damage the structure.
1 comment:
Patrick, all you needed was a large hammer to install the ill-fitting battery. That should be part of every outdoorman's kit :-) . Three quick strikes, and if that does not fix the problem, and your device is still intact, do as you did, and pry it out later. A hammer and three medium force strikes frequently works for me. Had to install a broken shear pin in the field. Amazingly, Honda provides an extra fitted to the outboard. And the boat had two weathered oars, which were also put into service. Just had to find a friendly guy with some tools. Yeah, I finally had to hit that broken pin pretty hard to remove it, as my buddy was wondering why I was tap, tap, tapping it. Told him I did not want to damage his shaft and bearing, but out in the field some of those niceties seem less important. It's all about the bigger hammer principle. Whacked it hard, and out it came. We still got a nice cruise around the lake in a very remote spot.
Jesus, Patrick...what were you thinking? Even assuming you got the battery to fit, it likely was incorrect voltage and such. Then, the likelihood of breaking the camera. Well, it all turned out OK, and you had a good story. Myself, it would have been one of those stories kept in the "maybe not" file. -- TEC
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