Picture of the day
I was coming back from a short loop on the mlcm this afternoon, and was moving along at a pretty good clip as I plunged down the hill on River Road. I’ve been taking the short bike path through the park that’s wrapped around the Kellog St water treatment plant, so I jump off River Road halfway down the hill and take Wren down to the waterfront. I was moving around 30mph on River Road, but I’d slowed down to under 20mph when I turned onto Wren because the city of Milwaukie doesn’t bother to cut the curb where Wren crosses any other streets. I spotted the curbs, jumped them, but just as I reached the block before the railroad crossing I missed a bump, and when I thumped over it my Pentax leapt out of my handlebar bag, whizzed by my ear, and fell with a fatal-sounding *clonk*! onto the street as I slammed on my brakes and skidded to a stop.
I got off the bicycle, walked back, picked up the Pentax. Intact, except for an impressive skid mark and crack at the corner of the battery case (the battery case lid had fallen off and the battery bay was empty.) A little bit of scouting around found the batteries laying forlornly on the ground, and a more extensive search found the battery lid sitting in the middle of the street looking like the cat that had just eaten the canary. It was a good sign that optics or electronic weren’t spilling out from the case or lens, and it was a better sign that once I put the batteries back and wedged the battery lid back on that the camera booted up and went to the bios date/time screen.
The only way to find out if the camera still works is to take a picture, and the railroad crossing was right in front of my nose on this nice warm sunny January day. So I performed the necessary diagnostics on the spot, then got back onto my bicycle and returned to tell the tale.
Too bad Apple doesn’t build their Macbook Air as robustly as the *istDS was built.