The Phoenix

Who can forget John Cameron Swayze and those old Timex commercials...."It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!". Well I guess you have to be old enough, but they were classics.

So I may have glossed over my near death experience in British Columbia on the Kispiox River in the previous post but it now becomes the center piece of an additional story of interest. While fishing the river in chest waders, I ended up in a section of particularly fast water. It started out innocently but each time I lifted my foot the water pushed me further into a dangerous situation. Eventually I lost my footing and went down on all fours desperately trying to grab bottom with my hands and kicking for a foothold with my feet. Worse still the water was pouring into the top of my waders and filling me up, not a good situation, and the cause of more than one river death each year among fisherman. So as my life flashed before my eyes I briefly realized that the camera in my shirt pocket was getting completely immersed under water. (Sounds trivial but it is the point of the story). Long story short I was finally pushed into slower water by the current and managed to stand up and walk out of the river a nearly drowned rat.

After getting to shore, dried off, and into warmer clothes I turned attention to the camera...it was the only thing on me that wasn't really intended to get wet. I striped the battery and memory cards out and we put it on the defroster vent in the truck with the heat on full for the next several hours. Despite what I felt was a through drying it never revived on the trip.

Flash forward to the end of the trip and upon returning home I charged the battery, and completely disassembled the camera to look for problems. Again, despite not finding anything wrong with the camera it refused to work.

Two months later I'm thinking of trying to sell the camera for parts when for some reason I decide to check the battery. Huh... the battery is completely discharged. After several hours on the charger it's still completely discharged. I wonder what would happen if I hook up a power supply to the camera. Huh...it works now!! What a surprise...with actual electrical power it's fully functional.

So the moral of the story is the camera's not dead until it's dead with a fully functional power source. I've got to say I'm impressed and I don't impress easily. Don't mistake this for a Sony endorsement, but it did take a licking and despite being left for dead it's now still ticking.