MacGuyver ain't got shit on me! or "The iScream Truck"

The Exeter girl called in sick, so I got to cover her shift in a truck I'd never driven before... 163. Sandra had lined up a vast assortment of gigs in the greater Exeter area, and I'd be responsible for tackling that initiative. The truck was stocked and ready to roll when I arrived, so once I cashed out from the day before and collected the requisite paperwork for the day's activities, I pulled the truck over to my Saab so I could transfer over the boombox, iPod and stuff. No sooner than the moment I slammed the shifter into park, the phone rang. Sandra wanted to make sure the music box worked because they had been having technical issues with that specific one. Flipped it on, "Pop Goes The Weasel" blasted out of the horn and that was that.

On my way to my first gig in Exeter, I made it a point to stop by and visit my pal Ken's younger brother who is on school vacation to see if he wanted any ice cream. As I pulled in their driveway, I reached over to the music box to alert him of my presence and there was silence. I futzed with it to lesser and lesser effect, and finally declared it dead after a couple of minutes. Once I had transacted the business at hand, I took the truck around the corner to the gig that was scheduled. Literally 3 people came and bought something, and in the meantime I thought of what I could do to have music without the music box. So once that gig was over, I made a quick trip over to Radio Shack and bought a female RCA jack. I had a ton of time before the next gig, and I was a mile from my house, so I went home to rig up the solution.

I found a test lead in my boxes in the basement that I deemed fit for the task at hand. I grabbed the utility knife that was on the table and cut the cable in half, stripped back the ends and then clipped each of the test leads to the respective + and - terminals on the RCA jack. With that all set up, I ran to my Mac to quickly throw together a version of "The Entertainer" that would sound fine playing through an iPod through this interesting setup. I downloaded the .mid file of the song, and dropped it into GarageBand. I selected the recognizable part of the song and repeated it a number of times so the iPod's hard drive wouldn't be taxed by reloading the same song every 20 seconds. GarageBand allowed me to export the "new song" as an AAC file and onto the iPod it went!

Everything tested fine in the truck... I tested the radio, then a few favorite clips from songs to test the volume and off I went again. The next gig was in Newfields, so I did some neighborhoods out there and tested the new music system. Kids said it was a little quieter than before, but able to be heard none the less. I went to the gig across town, then headed towards Exeter to knock out a few neighborhoods before the next gig. The rest of the afternoon was all gigs, with the exception of a new neighborhoods in between. One woman flagged me down and told me it was her son's birthday -- thinking the kid was like, I don't know 8 or something, I said sure, I'll sing Happy Birthday with you... so she went and got the kid while I went around the cul-de-sac and the embarassed soul was a 15 year old guy. Eh, $5 either way :)

Once the gigs ended, I did a quick spin through Newmarket and headed back to Eliot via my shop where Ken and his brother were fixing his brother's Jeep. I switched from the Entertainer to "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai and great laughter ensued. And that was my day... put the truck away around 9pm and went back to the shop for some mechanical mayhem and cheap beer.