9 May 2019 1:22 pm I skied very quickly from nice packed powder into much wetter, buttery, spring snow. If you don’t ski much you may not realize that quite varying snow types exist, and skis slide—or not—with different friction and forces on the various snow conditions.
One minute I was a healthy black diamond skier and the next moment I was a paraplegic learning the medical term “comminuted.” Comminuted referred to my "reduced to fine particles" tibia and fibula. “Displaced” was another term the medical folks used.
Connection to Marmot Ridge Foto? Crutches, cameras, tripods, film, trips to the back country, hopping on one-leg, swelling, pain and pain medicines — all that stuff does not work simultaneously. No paraplegics allowed.
R.I.C.E.: rest, ice, compression and elevation. Once my leg did not really require elevation, my dear wife hoisted my computer and scanner from the basement so that I could catch up on a large backlog of 4X5 inch films. I only realized that option after six weeks (two surgeries), and the swelling receded.
EPSON SUPPORT
Before my ski wreck, my Epson 850 Pro kept producing verticals lines: very visible in areas of the photo with consistent texture. Skies, even parking lots were royally messed up. I suspected film processing, then I suspected a sensor problem on the Epson.
Well, a paraplegic will not be out shooting spring flowers, so he sat on the Epson helpline. The Epson people were jewels. Their English never perfect, but they had the patience to stay with the problem.
First, I had to convince them that yes, it is out of warranty, and if it needed parts I would pay. But what was the problem??? We worked through their boilerplate solution search, but one techie talked me into using a different film (6X6), and the corresponding 6X6 film carrier. Whoosh, straight lines disappeared. Ok, now what was wrong with the 4X5 carried?
The carrier has a quarter inch transparent slot across the top. It is never in the scan area so I had never, in eighteen months, cleaned it. I clean the carrier each and every slide, but never the filthy slot. Who knows what it does? My guess: the scanner and the software do some sort of calibration of the sensor in that area. Once it was cleaned, all the straight lines disappeared. YES!
I need to get back to Epson and close the ticket. I concluded the final solution, but their support folks certainly walked me through the debug of the issue with loads of patience.