Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/02/17

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Leica Abuse!
From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 11:05:51 -0500

 Greg Locke <locke@straylight.ca> wrote:

>How many of you folks had to chip! your car out of a block of ice this
morning?
>
>JEEEZ! It's on days like this I wonder why I didn't take up tropical flower
>photography.
>
>Assignment was 8:30AM. I'm out the door at 8:00 but due to freezing rain
>(no, not cold... FREEZING on contact., turning to ICE) the car is encased
in
>ice.  In deed, the streets and sidewalk are like a skating rink.
>
>...did I mention I live on a hill?   That skating rink is on a hill.
>(...think about for a second)
>
>While scraping ice from the car windows, I fall.  Leica M6 leaves my
>shoulder proceeds to makes it way DOWN the ice covered street.... picking
up
>speed as it goes.
>
>I scream in horror as it heads for the main road at the bottom of my
street.
>
>My neighbour, 3 doors down, hears my scream, looks up from his ice scraping
>and spots the M6 coming towards him..... an calmly bends down and grabs the
>strap as it rockets past him.
>
>Mercifully, there was a happy ending. No broken bones (just a bruised
>backside) assignment got done and M6 SURVIVED!.... but it doesn't quite
>qualify for MINT status anymore.
>
>...what a day...
>
Reminds me of Mr Bean scooting down the street in his out of control Morris
Mini !

jh


And more to the point, it reminds me that when I was but an insane
adolescent, I spent endless, bitterly cold hours shooting my school's hockey
team. This was a bit more complicated than it sounds, because, being a
fiscally poor school, our hockey rink was in a sunless cove on a large pond.
Getting to the rink meant crossing about a 1/4 mile of frozen lake, and then
standing on the ice on the outside of the rink boards. All of which meant
lacing on one's hockey skates, and skating down the ungroomed lake ice to
the rink, photo equipment in hand...What that lead to was the "broken bones
are insured and more easily repaired than my camera" school of equipment
protection - or, learning to respond to your feet leaving the ground by
holding the camera airborne in one hand while the other hand tried to keep
your head from hitting the ice... As anyone who knows me well now could tell
you, I was more successful at protecting my camera than my head... :-)