Humor in the News - Mountaineer Saved by the Bell

[Tod]

Mountaineer Saved by the Bell

Fri Jun 28, 9:25 AM ET

 

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - A hiker is stranded in South America's Andes mountains when a blizzard begins. He reaches into his backpack for his cell phone -- only to find his prepaid minutes are up.

 

 

The Colombian mountaineer slowly begins freezing to death, surviving for 24 hours with his only warmth coming from carefully measured dozes of brandy. Then suddenly, at above 12,500 feet, Leonardo Diaz hears a familiar ring.

 

Out of nowhere, a phone company solicitor is calling on his cell phone, asking if he would like to buy more time.

 

"We called him to remind him that his cell phone was out of minutes. He said it was the work of an angel, because he was lost in the (Andes)," said Maria del Pilar Basto, the Bell South operator who called Leonardo.

 

"We thought it was a joke, but he insisted, and it was true."

 

Basto called for help, and she and other operators kept ringing Leonardo to keep him awake and help ward off hypothermia. He was able to keep talking to her until rescue teams arrived seven hours later -- with the frigid temperatures acting as natural recharger for his two cell phone batteries.

 

"I remembered that when I was a boy I put batteries in the freezer," Diaz said in a newspaper interview describing his late May adventure. "So, I took off (the dead) battery and flung it into the snow. After half an hour, it was working again."

 

Diaz was not answering his cell phone on Thursday.

[Bronco]

now call me crazy, but, I am under the impresion that cold temps DRAIN batteries

 

Can any of you geeky er educated folks help me out here?

[Gimpy]

I know cold temps drain car batteries, but they are quite different from nickle-cadnium batteries. I also know, according to a recent study, that regular alkaline batteries last just as long stored in a fridge as they do on a shelf. (Not longer, as my wife thought, rather no advantage to either storage method) I also know that when a battery has pooped out you can disconnect it for a short time, let it cool, and it does seem to replenish a bit.

 

The real issue here is that maybee, just MAYBEE, telephone solicitors aren't all servants of Hell.

[Alpine_Tom]

quote:

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Originally posted by Gimpy:

The real issue here is that maybee, just MAYBEE, telephone solicitors aren't all servants of Hell.

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I disagree. Doesn't the Good Book say that the Devil can appear with the voice of an angel? I suspect that's what happened here.

[bellemontagne]

Cold temps help to drain the batteries when current is being used from the battery (i.e. using a cell phone or turning your flashlight on). When batteries are disconnected and no current is being used, it helps to "recharge" the battery. It's a chemistry thing and I'm not a chemist. I just know it works.