Necessity is the Momma of Innovation

What do you do when you've finally fixed issues with modems, cable-patching, networking, and software for the last hundred hours, only to find out your firewire port has been bent and you're supposed to be live streaming video for at least 3 more days? Well Veronica and I put our heads together this morning and after deciding that our intial setup wasn't going to cut it anymore, we started to scheme a completely MacGyvered Plan B as you can see from the picture above. We initially came up with using a webcam that I had brought along "just in case we needed it", but it had no iris or neutral density filter for the daylight hours, pretty much rendering it useless. If only we had a ND filter of some sort... something see-through with an amber tint... wait, sunglasses! Luckily we not only had sunglasses, but the other Veronica had a pair of black bar glasses from Stupidiotic that we planned on using for "anonymous interviews". A few boxes to prop the camera setup on and half a roll of electrical tape to mount it securely to the dashboard and we were back in business!

Not I don't know about you guys, but I haven't worked with too many media people who can trouble shoot instantaneously on the go in a moving vehicle with extremely limited supplies on about 4 hours of sleep and produce a live video feed with pretty much rubber bands and a paper clip. This isn't the first time the Veronica's have pulled this off... but it probably is the most innovative setup we've developed yet! We think Richard Dean Anderson would be all kinds of proud if he knew about this (and hopefully not be too upset that we've decided to dub ourselves MacGyver 2.0.) The first time was an in-vehicle "tripod" in 2006 for the camera when we hit some rain, where we basically used duct tape, a bungee cord, and several laptop bag straps (as well as the bag itself) to secure our little Sony safely inside and still shoot, and it worked brilliantly!

But enough talking about how awesome we feel right now since the video feed is working again! Really this is about you guys at home finally being able to see and hear everything that is going on throughout our journey as we Race Across America, and now hopefully you will be able to join us in the front passenger's seat for the rest of the ride. So log in, grab your Funions, and buckle up- we still have 6 states to go!

Keep on trucking,

-V
www.viasat.com/raam