Somedays you are at the top of your game. Other days you are not. Yesterday was one of those days were I was scraping the bottom of the barrel just to get buy. You see I had grand plans to visit both the national Brockway Show in Cortland, NY and the national Historical Construction Equipment Association meet in a Canandaigua. Being the young go-getter that I am I was confident that I had the plan and equipment to make it work. I would stop by Cortland first thing in the morning to catch the parade of trucks from the Brockway Muesum to their display location on downtown main street. I was going to bring my usual camera with spare battery as well as dedicated video recorder. I woke up early on Saturday morning and began to assemble my gear only to find that the spare battery was not where I left it. I looked everywhere but it was gone. Oh well, the video camera would help me stretch my recording power I optimistically told myself. I went into the basement to find the tripod but found only the tripod’s empty box. Scouring of the house finally turned up the missing device and allowed me to finally hit the road. Making good time to Cortland I found a nice spot near the museum and setup my camera. I powered up the video camera and checked the battery meter. A whopping 11 minutes of estimated time greeted my face.

Literally, that’s what I did. I laughed and then said what, over and over. I had fully charged the camera over two days ago and never used it. In my ignorance I had closed the view finder but neglected to hit the off button. The camcorder sat there in ready state for two days happily draining the battery. By 8:30 I was already down a battery and recording device without shooting a single photo! I had to make the difficult decision to record what I could of the parade and save the rest of my capacity for the HECA event. It’s lonely at the top when you have to make these kinds of decisions. At the end of it all I managed to grab about 5 minutes of Brockways prowling the streets and a few photos. Hopefully my redemption will come from the Canandaigua footage.

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I almost forgot about these “tractors” that were at the Broome County Fair a few weeks ago. They hail from the super stock class of tractors which according to the info on the NYTPA website can include a few different setups.

Code Red is an International 1066 and is listed as Pro Stock tractor. Regulations dictate tractors in the class run on diesel only and have a displacement of 680 cubic inches. Turbo size is unlimited as long you only run one. Little More Patience on the other hand has three turbos jammed under the hood. Whoa. I really thinking they should attach a wagon to the rear and give the most awesome haunted hayrides ever.

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