Two things come to mind. One was... one of those perfect days - up before sunrise, a doe wandered down to the stream right across from me and my tripod, various songbirds coming into view... and about 3:00 in the afternoon I realized I had forgotten to load the camera with film. The second was one night when I was out under a bridge making time exposures during a lightning storm. Some great images. Went into the darkroom and loaded that roll of film onto the spool, then set it on the counter. Started loading another roll of film, but I was having a hard time getting it to line up properly. After several frustrating minuted I decided to get another spool, and put the roll of film in a drawer and turned on the lights. Took the first roll of film with the lightning shots, which was still sitting on the counter, and tossed it.
There was also the time when I was out on the St. Lawrence River at low tide, and it was really windy so I had the tripod legs set up really wide, but not to be outdone the wind changed directions and blew the entire assembly onto a rock. Dented in the camera body and snapped the tripod mount on the 400mm lens. I don't know there was anything else I could have done, though, other than stay home. Or the time I was driving around the coastline of New Brunswick early Sunday morning - not on a photography excursion, but driving to Halifax via the scenic route to see a friend. Stopped at a small river and made some images of the fishing boats with the last of my film. Got back in the car, drove a few hundred more metres and there was an estuary with... 37 Great Blue Herons in it. And me without film, at 7:00 on a Sunday morning, in rural New Brunswick. Still have the memory, though.
Mike.