I got bailed out

I must’ve walked under a ladder or something weird because the week before last was pretty rough.

My week of misfortune started during a game in which Malta defeated Shelby in the rainiest football game Malta has seen in some time.

I went to Mustang field that day to accomplish one thing. That thing was to do my job. I definitely did that, taking tons of pictures and I even stayed out to interview players and the coach after the game. Mission Complete, right?

It was complete but little did I know, there would be a couple of casualties.

First of which, my recorder stopped working. The second of which, my camera met it’s watery grave. The latter was the one that hurt the most. That Canon Rebel T3i had been with me for most of my career here at the PCN.

I still remember the first day Curtis surprised me and plopped the bag with that camera on my desk. If I had a son before PJ, it was that camera. So when I flipped the on switch and all it did was beep at me, I knew something was wrong.

I didn’t understand it. I took every precaution to protect my beloved. I walked around the field with a protective sleeve made to protect my gear.

When I left the game, I checked on my camera only to find that it wasn’t even wet.

My theory is that the condensation from my breathing and the humidity from the bag messed it up.

My editor, Mark, graciously let me use his camera body for a few games last week while we waited for a replacement for my gear.

My recorder eventually recovered after resting for a few days. The recorder incident brings me to my next issue, an incident in which I lost a few recordings the day of our paper deadline.

I used my old recorder in place of the one that wouldn’t work after the rainy game. I had the old recorder at the Dodson Invitational. I had several interviews with members of both of our local cross country teams.

After the meet I learned that my regular recorder worked, so I put my old recorder to the side and planned on writing the Dodson Invitational story Tuesday morning. That backfired because I couldn’t find it and I failed to backup my recordings.

I scrambled for a couple of hours before I gave up and luckily Thea Solberg and Robin Warren bailed me out with their team reports.

It was a week to forget. But I learned a few lessons, including not swimming with my camera.