Heels Over Head

a real-life adventure

Read Part VIII here.

Now available in ebook format!

The morning of my first backboard trip, before the accident occurred, the Department of Wildlife had dispatched an officer to an Estes Park motel after a great horned howl nestling was nudged from its nest.

Too young to fly, the owl had perched upon a rail near the motel's lobby entrance to welcome tourists and become one of the most popular attractions in town that day. One of my photos ran three columns by ten inches deep in that day's paper.

The officer logged the exact time the bird was photographed by the local newspaper. (Me.)

The rest of the stills, from the camera loaded with black and white film, and the backup camera loaded with color slides, and with and without strobe, were of identical quality. Perfect quality. The videotape, when inserted in a VCR, displayed, with amazing clarity, the winged creature performing extreme head-turning contortion. The tape just wouldn't play in the video camera. Perhaps because it wouldn't fit in the crunched machine.

All my film from that morning had survived. Visual and court-ready proof beyond a shadow of a doubt ALL my cameras had been in perfect working order just hours before the accident.

My cameras were the most important material things I owned then, and I had to make do without them for what felt like an eternity. Even when I finally settled the claim, I ended up forking out more than $1,300 out of pocket to replace the entire collection.

And now I was saddled with a mouthy paramedic who thought I'd be able to collect damages for a treasured pair of jeans.

Back to the real world!

And that's exactly where I landed when an oxygen mask covered my face, followed by a needle being inserted into my right arm.

My first ambulance ride had been less than a minute long. On this one, I'd be lucky to find myself at the nearest hospital in less than an hour.

Read Part X here.

Table of Contents

Copyright 2012 by Deborah and Brett AtkinsonAll rights reserved. No part of this book - prose, photos or graphics - may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without express prior written permission of the author.

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