Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Murphy Strikes

This trip was everything that I had imagined and more, however I had not known that a friend of mine named Murphy had squirreled any in my luggage. You have all heard of Murphy haven’t you; anything that could go wrong will go wrong, Murphy.

Well Murphy was at work with my picture taking, I’ve never had so many problem just trying to take some photos. Normally I ride with my camera in a small pouch on my bike. I’ve ridden this way for years with no problem, but never with Murphy.

I started off with a Samsung digital camera that I’ve had for years. Not an expensive camera, but a camera that will take pretty good photos, but if it breaks it won’t be much of a concern. The first day it was raining pretty hard and though I had it enclosed in a plastic bag, halfway through the day, I noticed that the camera wasn’t working.

That evening we rolled into town and I found a store called Bi-Mart and picked up a new camera. Took the flash memory card from the broken Samsung camera and presto was back in business with no lost photos. Take that Murphy!

For the rest of the first week I was happily clicking away taking pictures and movies with no problems at all until the day we rolled into the last stop of the week, Crescent City. I took my last set of photos on the way into town. I stopped at the Motel to check in, had lunch at a Subways, found a ice cream stop, went shopping for souvenirs and finally stopped at the library for 30 minutes to catch up on e-mail. As I way unlocking my bike, I noticed that the camera was GONE along with the week’s worth of photos! Somewhere in the last 2 hours my new camera had left the bike. I don’t think that it fell off the bike and I would not like to accuse anyone in Crescent City in taking the camera, so I figure that it must have been Murphy again.

The next day was our off day between weeks, so I headed off to the local Walmart to buy another camera. I found a replacement camera, third camera for this trip. A bit of sticker shock though, the price of the camera was the same, but Oregon doesn’t have sales tax. With the California sales tax, the same price camera cost $13 more. I hope that California spends that money well.

The next day I was off happily snapping pictures again. Murphy was not done with me yet. I think Murphy was trying to see how stubborn I was, because on my third day out while riding through the Redwood forest on a bumpy road Murphy must of loosened the Velcro strap that held the camera in it’s pouch, cause as you may have guessed, out of the corner of my eye I saw the camera make a perfect arching leap from my bike and hit the ground. Ouch!! I fetched the camera. It seemed to still be working, but later in the day the display stopped working. Oh well three cameras and the trip still had a couple more days.

The next town was Cloverdale. It was too small for a Walmart, but it did have a Radio Shack. I found another camera exactly like the one that just hit the ground and bought it. At least I didn’t have to read another owner’s manual.

I guess Murphy must have gotten pretty tired by now because I didn't have anymore camera problems and was able to upload a week’s worth of photos to the web.

p.s.

When I got home I took the camera that fell off my bike back to Walmart. Much to my surprise, I was able to get an entire refund for the camera that "just stopped working". Is that something that I'll have to explain to St. Peter at the Golden Gate?

Happy Trails,

Brian

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