Tinkering

 

The home set up last week for hockey

I enjoy cars in that I like driving them. I like looking at them, especially vintage models.

But I'm lucky I know where the gas goes. OK, I can do menial things like changing tires and lightbulbs and such but I'm no gear head.

However, put audio equipment in my hand and I'll be good for a while.

I'm always looking for the right combination in my quest for efficiency.

I recently saw a post in a Facebook group that showed an equipment bag and my wheels began to turn. Amazon said it was a bargain and I was sold!

It was too small. Like, silly.

I'm not one to give up but no matter what I did I couldn't find the secret sauce to make it work. 

What I'm looking for is something efficient to hold the basics. The problem of course is that I have MacGyver tendencies -- meaning I want to be hyper-prepared for all circumstances.

That, of course, means I need to pack a lot.

Yet, do I really? I mean, I have to bring a mixer, headset, crowd mic, and cables for the mic and to export the audio to a camera*.

*I should mention tomorrow is my first basketball game at Brunswick. Hockey is coming.

But...wait. Do I need an extension cord? What about a power strip?

(I can never think about power strips without the story of them missing in Cooperstown. I have to hold that one for another time.)

You can obviously begin to see where the bag begins to grow, right? I like that ability to have every answer. I don't like the need to go back to the car or, worse, not having the part in question.

So I tinker with the right combination to fit in the bag. Then I keep other bags in the car. There's even more at home.

You can probably imagine the shakes I feel when I travel by bus. That means I don't have the full complement of equipment with me.

Among the many things that I laugh at is the notion that we have so much room to work with in the booths we're in.

No, literally. Ha.

(OK, Cardinal Stadium excluded.)

But the truth is, space is very limited. So that factors into what I pack and how I pack it and how much I bring.

We haven't even gotten to the potential for bad or sunny weather and if I bring my Pelican case.

There's so much to think about and so many different options.

I've packed, unpacked, gone downstairs, come back upstairs, looked for an adaptor, gone back downstairs, grabbed something, come back upstairs...and so on.

That's just for my studio setup as I continue to look for the optimal setup to run everything.

I do it every day.

I'll do it again tomorrow.

The road set up at Fairfield Prep last Sunday