Plan B
"Always have a back up plan", he remembered from the Korean martial arts movie, and yesterday was a perfect example of the wisdom in that adage. There isn't a lot of options if you are shooting video from a motorcycle and it rains. You can
wrap the camera in a rain coat like a hot bean burrito, but the lens still takes on all the moisture, grime, dirt, mud and steam from the road and sky. It gets ugly in a hurry. I had met with the bike captain earlier and suggested that a covered golf cart with open sides and front might work, but he scoffed it off as "too big, it's two wheels or nothing". Faced with the reality of traveling almost 9,000 miles at great expense (more on that later) and coming home with nothing but video of the beach being pelted by non stop dollops of rain, was not particularly pleasant. Sure, everyone would say, "well, what do you do?", but the issue du jour, was that there was, or should be, a contingency plan (of some sort). He had about an
hour to devise one. And coming home with nothing but his Canon in his hand was simply, not an option.
Saturday night ended peaceful enough, another beautiful sunset, early dinner and final prep of all gear, charging of batteries, checking the check list one last time and peaking out the window prior to sleep. And don't forget to set the clocks back an hour for daylight savings time, mate.
At about three in the morning he heard it. THAT sound of a monsoon on a cold tin roof, falling hard and falling fast. Big time rain, not like a light Seattle woman rain, this was a fall that would sink inches into the soil and quench vegetation thirsts for months to come. If the Koala's can stay dry through this day they will feast come June and July he thought.
Back to the back up and race time is down to minutes, under now clear, but still threatening skies. There was no way he could control both cameras in the rain, so one had to go on auto, while he focused all his effort and attention on the "A" rig, meaning that the original vest set up was going to be cumbersome at best. He finally decided to use the Manfroto vacuum mount at the front of the BMW RT 1100 and fix the Figrig to the left frame, low angle. That way he could monitor the Canon, barely seeing the viewfinder, being it on the left, and have some confidence that the Sony was all the while shooting away off the front. OK, here's your plan B, let's give 'er a go.
Mike is a very adept rider and gentlemen to boot. Asking a volunteer to ride a huge touring bike at the speed of a cyclist is a true test of patience, and strength. But we went off with the best of intentions and caught a break in the rain until about 30 minutes into the three lap course. Now what? Roger is gong to be furious that we have interrupted the GPS data, but we are now on the verge of losing everything, so we pulled into a service station and waited for a break in the rain, After about twenty minutes we got one and away we went, out towards the turn around. Decent video in the diffused light, but by now both cameras were taking on moisture. After the turn and heading back we hit a swell. A wall of vertical water, no wind, grey almost turing to black. No cover just a few shrubs and a few small eucalyptus trees. We pulled over as the race leaders sped past and tried to protect the cameras and clean the filthy lens'. Make adjustments, roll with punches, play delt hand. At that moment it appeared that the rains, with no wind might be here to stay, meaning that we hadn't even captured one complete loop.
I was getting soaked while Mike put on his foul weather gear, and I again looked towards the heavens, offering a silent prayer with a deep sigh. "What do you want to do", Mike asked innocently. Resisting the urge for sarcasm, I asked how far to the next town, or place of cover. "About 2K" was Mikes reply. "OK, we're not going to get any video out here, so let's high tail it to cover and re-group", I said starting to take the Canon out of it's shoe and store it under his jacket for the ride. "We should go fast then since no video"? "Yes, get us out of this mess with all haste, mate".
Oops.
As soon as we hit 100Kph the Sony came lose from the suction and went flying past my right arm like a drunken pelican. Or, like only a drunken pelican can.
"FUCK, STOP, FUCK, STOP"
Mike saw it too and was already looking for a hole between the two lines of athletes coming and going in either direction as I looked behind to see the camera still bouncing down the wet tarmac, bikers swerving to avoid this sudden, and potentially catastrophic thing, which by all appearances looked to be a large sea bird lost on it's way home from a day long happy hour.
"FUCK"
We gurneyed the victim to the bike, roared to a dry, covered aid station, and like the lyrical rat in a drain ditch, began to sort things out. Mike went for coffee, and when he returned he inquired about the bird. "DOA", we're done to one." It was raining on our parade, big time.
So we wait, cold, agitated, wet, knowing that the prospects for better weather were about as good as me winning the local lottery without a ticket. Some plan B.
Since this is a blog and not a novel, I'll give ya the rest of the days events in one paragraph. Miraculously, the clouds cleared and we were able to continue. We used the vest for the subsequent second, third and fourth laps, getting some decent video, albeit a little blocked by Mikes left arm, clutch hand, and windshield visor. It rained sporadically for the remainder of the day and we ended up getting about four hours of total video, which I am hoping will give us one complete good lap of RCV video. The synergy of video to GPS will be a chore but I am going to log every mile later today so that we have a hard copy from which too refer when the going gets tough. I looked at about two hours worth last night before the total physical meltdown and it will be OK. The four hours of shooting took its toll. His back was on fire, from the stress of holding the camera at the necessary angle and distance from the vest. It was a painful and difficult shoot. But one that we wouldn't have had now in the can, it it wasn't for Plan B. Or as we joked after the long day was done, "In the pelican can."
Cheers, mates! Hope to see you in Busseltown in December.
