where a brand new camera part falls in the lake and a daring rescue effort proves futile…

Splash…it is gone.

It’s been a busy time. In two days, I’m flying off to France. There’s work to be done there, but I also have a few days off in between. But now, on this side of the ocean, I am at a crunch. I have been teaching overtime to make up some class hours and I have been trying to frontload all committee work so that I do not fall behind.

So little time to blog!

This evening, I realize that I hadn’t even taken out my camera, let alone given much thought to a post for the day. And so I go out for a brief stroll by the lake – some two blocks away from where I live.

There is always something great to take photos of out by the lake. In the winter, I have been mesmerized by the ice fishermen. In times of bad weather, watching the clouds move through is as dramatic as anything on TV. And on this early fall day, I am happy as anything just to watch the fisher-people do their thing. This guy hadn’t caught anything all day. Two minutes of me watching and he lands a blue gill.






I am about to go home, but the sky is especially dramatic and so I decide to step out on the little wharf that juts out into lake Monona. I am just messing around, wondering how wide the lens span is and so I snap this…





…and I think how funny it would be if my new equipment somehow slipped from my hand and fell into the water.

No sooner do I consider how funny it would be, when the lens cap wiggles out of my fingers and plunks right into the lake.

Damn.

I call Ed who never thinks anything is a problem.
I dropped my lens cap in the lake – I tell him. I called everywhere and a replacement is not to be had!
Why would you spend money on a replacement cap if the old one is just in the lake? Did you go in and try to fish it out?
I was on the little wharf jutting out into the lake! It’s deep there!
Can’t be more than a couple of feet…
I am not going to go jump in the lake after a lens cap!
Why not? It’s probably there on the bottom, where you dropped it.
The current moved it miles away, I’m sure!
There is no current there.
There’s duck poop in the lake! It’s slimy around the shore!
You said you were on the wharf jutting into the lake…
It’s freezing in the water!
How would you know without testing it? I’ll go jump in the lake for you if you want.
I couldn’t ask you to do that… Maybe I could… Could you do that maybe?




Our best efforts… okay, Ed’s best efforts prove futile.

I knew I should have come with my underwater visor...

I assure him that I do not mind purchasing a generic replacement cap. That I’ll attend to my cameras in the future. That it was an unfortunate accident that is unlikely to happen again.

I’m a lawyer, after all. I can convince anyone of anything.