Brydn's 2003 Montana Travel Journal: The VCR Tapes Are Melting

Brydn's 2003 Montana Travel Journal: The VCR Tapes Are Melting

Page 26

By the time I reach Shelby, Montana, the heat is well into the 100's. The video production room is on the roof, a fine place for a hot day.

I heft the head on camera into the tower. First time up the crawl ladder, I gash my head on the cage because I thought the space between the ladder and the cage were a little wider. The gate keeper sees me. I just about blank out. Post time is at 4pm. There are 5 five races. Pat, Brian and their friend Judah show up. Ken and Judah go to the backside office to license Judah. Pat, Brian and I go up on the roof tower to set up the backside tower camera. We have to tear off the door to get in. It's full of bird nest material and empty drink containers. I white balance and filter up the camera. Judah has done this before, so he doesn't need a lot of explanations. I go back to the roof. The next thing I know it's post time. The post parade is out on the track. I hit record on my decks. Immediately, the head on deck dies. I hit record again and it stops again. "Oh shit." I go to aim my camera. The head is mounted too far back. I can't see the gate. "And they're off." After a couple seconds, the first quarter house race runs by. No record of the gate. All I have for the tape is me testing the pan camera out Monday on a girl as she rides by her horse. Rawley comes in and points out the pan is mounted wrong. Pat and I moved it to the edge of the window. I can now see down the track. I put a fresh tape in the head-on deck. Head on camera is super blue and over saturated or washed out. Second race; head-on deck eats the tape. The judges seem to want reruns of every race. I have the correct angle on the master deck. Third race; I replace the head-on deck with a new out of the box JVC deck. I put in fresh tape. The deck eats it. I have to cut tape out with my knife. No head-on camera signal at all. I swap to the original deck. Race three; have to keep pushing record button on head-on deck to get it to stay on. Race four; the master deck stack goes blank. It's 95` outdoors and on the roof it's hotter. I don't record on the master. There's nothing on monitor but blue screen. The cassette plastic on the VCR tapes are melting, warping and not going into the deck. Race five; head-on deck and now the back side deck starts recording so I just leave them on. The stewards ask for replays. Again, all I have are the pan and backside angles.