Although everything physical that was taken can be replaced, the digital moments that those items recorded though, unfortunately, cannot.

Katie & I visited the town of Bellefontaine in Ohio last week, to the site of the World’s Smallest Street - McKinley street. Actually I’ve since discovered that there is a dispute to its claim as this street here reckons it’s shorter, yeah - whatever. All I know is that we spent quite a bit of time there, and I recorded some amusing multi-angle shots of us ‘running’ in slow-motion ‘race’, which in my head I was already putting to the music from Chariots of Fire - would have been amusing, but no one gets to see it now.

There was some beautiful footage of an abandoned farmhouse that we drove past with rusty cars decaying by nature (that I took photos off and DID manage to keep/publish) was on one of the tapes stolen, never to be seen again.

When we crossed the state line from Tennessee into North Carolina on Monday, I saw and screamed at Katie to stop at this house in the middle of nowhere, which I suddenly saw had a whole collection of license plates adorning one of the walls. The elderly lady in the house came out and explained to us that her husband had collected license plates his whole life (along with rusty farm machinery!) and put them on the side of the house for everyone to see as people drove buy. Considering that I’m doing the lower 48 states, and my photo gallery here of collecting a picture of a plate-from-every-state it was just perfect to see and video, and photo. But not now.

Somewhere in deepest darkest Ohio near the WV state border, we stopped at a state-paid service area, which was really just an area with picnic tables, a water fountain and toilets … if you could call them that. I’ve seen better restrooms in France (the most disgusting public toilet country in the world) as the ’sit down’ toilet part was just a hole in the ground - and yes, I took my video camera in and got some shots of the whole thing … and of Katie who was so grossed out by it all (and somewhat vocal in her disapproval) that a woman parked in a nearby car heard her and came dashing over to offer up some hand sanitizer - all on video, all good fun, but … gone. We later laughed when looking on a Ohio-state-provided map that they have different classifications of service areas, and the one we were at had been labeled simply “Primitive”. No kidding.

When we met Betty in Ohio last week, we got that on video, as well as the pictures of the same-name place in Tennessee (Amersham) that we did Monday morning, I’ll never see those again. *sigh*

So that’s what you missed. That’s what I’ll never get back, although there’s a tiny part of me that thinks “Well maybe I’ll have to go back AGAIN and do those places again one day”, just to be totally not beaten on the whole thing. Maybe.

Yesterday I tidied up the car and realised actually the full extent of what has been taken. Yes I’d filed a police report on the camera, video camera, PC, TomTom and two iPods - but then suddenly there were loads of little bits that I realised were gone.

In the video camera bag was spare batteries and a charger, and another external microphone. And an expensive radio mic kit - oh and my nice Sennheiser headphones too. The suction device that allowed me to ’stick’ my video camera to the bonnet [hood] of the car and shoot me back through the window was in their. Even the the mounting clip on my tripod (they didn’t take the tripod, but they might as well have done) was attached to the camera, and it’s going to be a pain in the arse to replace.

Talking of things being a pain in the arse to replace … if I want to get the Sony HVRA1U camcorder that I had before, it’s on “Back Order” from the Sony website, or “7-14 days” from the B&H website. I don’t know where I’ll be in 7-14 days time as I’ll be on the road somewhere. So how do I get it shipped to me? And that’s two more weeks of the road trip GONE without anyway of videoing it. It’s like .. I’ll get only half the trip on video now, which is actually upsetting. I’d set up the whole thing to be one long video documentary and drama.

Which reminds me - the tapes of all the footage that I’d recorded since Maine, of which there was other material that could have been used, I now no longer have.

Oh, and even though I can buy a new Nikon camera, my CF cards and flash unit were also taken. And my super-fast editing PC came actually came with a standard crappy on-board soundcard, which I replaced with a very decent HT Omega soundcard instead (beats the pants off any Creative Soundblaster product) last year for really good audio quality when editing, and now it’s gone. They also took my little Nikon Coolpix point and shoot digital camera too which had some photos on it too. Gone.

Makes me wonder … where in the world all that stuff is now. Has the person that’s got it played back the tape, or looked at the photos on the camera and can see all this? See what I look like, see that there is a journey and a history there, and if it makes them care for a second. Yeah … don’t answer that one, I already really know the answer.

Ok, I’ll stop with the “gone’s” now, it’s even getting annoying to me - except for the final moment of “Oh the little fuckers”, when I realised that they also scooped the $4.25 in cash off of the dashboard which had been sitting there - in the shape of 17 state quarters which I’d collected as I had (of course) started to see if I could get the state quarter in each place I visited as I went around. I’ll have to start that again too now.

I went through Finchley VA and Hampstead NC yesterday. At Finchley (nothing to see, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for) my heart wasn’t in it and there was nothing much to report on. But a drive south down the I-40 listening to music on the CD’s that hadn’t been stolen slowly improved my mood and Hampstead suddenly seemed vaguely exciting.

Then I got a call last night from my friend Tami in New Orleans, who I shall be with by Friday of next week, and the talk of seeing her, being shown round the city and (hopefully) the Police Department of which she works for perked me right up and (finally) got my mood back on track for the next two months.

Gotta swing by Charleston though this weekend, relax, order some new gear with the lovely amount of money that’s been raised, and I’ll hit the road again on Sunday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Underground : USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Share this post on Facebook