Barcelona, Spain

“Maybe it needs more coat-hangers?”

It had been about 5 hours since my $2’000 AUD Nikon D80 SLR Camera was accidentally knocked off the sixth story rooftop of our Barcelona apartment. The camera, I was quite positive, was a goner. I only hoped to salvage the memory card which had stored on it in a near infinite array of 1’s and 0’s the digital photos of the most spectacular Spanish sunrise over the rooftops of Barcelona city.

Our evening before through to the morning gone had been near perfect. New friends, drunken misbehaviour all topped off with a rooftop shindig and the rising sun. It’s crazy how in the shortest of seconds the elation felt from our night-gone could turn to absolute despair.

“That’ll do it,” declared Ryan as he attached 3 more coat-hangers to the television antenna, our crudely constructed ‘grabbling hook’, and lowered it into the shady terrace that held my shattered camera on a bed of rubbish 6 stories below. I was well dubious this far-out idea would end in success, and with 15 minutes left till we checked out things were looking very grim. After a few more failed attempts, I took over the Nikon-fishing. Repeating positive affirmation after positive affirmation, a few more passes and I snagged the bugger.

“Slowly, slowly,” Ryan exclaimed. Some advice I no doubt needed as my eagerness to hold the thing would have no doubt resulted in me dropping her again. The longest 30 or so seconds later and the prize was mine. A shattered mess of plastic, metal, electronics and glass, but with a perfectly intact memory card, complete with photos that are, I hope, testament to our most spectacular SLR-rescue ordeal.