Who Moved My Disk?

Here's an important lesson: make sure there's a disk in the camera before leaving the house.

I wanted to ride out to a particularly deep wash south of my house and take a picture of my bicycle, not because I'm inordinately proud of my bike but because I felt my blog needed a picture, and I'm reasonably certain nobody wanted to see a picture of me, in or out of biking garb. The spot I picked is 17 minutes away by my watch, mostly uphill and on dirt trails that look like they've witnessed the Last Roundup. So many horses have gone through the trails have been ground into something approaching the consistency of dry pancake mix. It looked like the whole 7th Cavalry had ridden through, complete with piles of road apples left here and there to make it even more fun.

So I toiled uphill (not much of an uphill, but it's still uphill) through this glutinous dust, dodging road apples and trying to estimate the number of horses by the number of hoofprints ("Hmm, thirty horses, headed southeast, and they'll get to Dodge City before us!") and I get to the spot where I wanted to take the picture.

I pulled the camera out of my shirt and turned it on, and there were the lovely words "No Disk". It didn't even say "I'm sorry, no disk." Just No Disk. As in No Sale. No Cigar. No Joy. No Soup For You.

So I rode back to the house, through the same Cavalry-churned dust only slightly downhill this time, and ended taking a picture of my bike in my back yard, in my shallower and less photogenic wash. Someday I'll get back to the deep wash and take a better picture, but only after I tattoo Do You Have A Disk on my forehead.