I’ve been waiting.  And watching.  And it finally happened.

Helmet cams got small and cheap!  This is a Mobius Action Cam and it measures something like 1.5″ x 2.5″ and sells for less than $100.  I bought one knowing that:

• It may or may not work well because nobody I know has one, so I have no real-life recommendation.  It got decent reviews on the site I bought it from, though, so it wasn’t a complete shot in the dark.
• Attaching it to a helmet is done with sticky-backed velcro – which sounds like a dubious plan to anyone but Red Green.
• Downloading or editing the video is unknown territory.  No fancy software package comes with the camera. This actually may be what attracted me to it – the thrill of unknown tech challenges.  I’d like to say that I am not being serious here, but um well, I’m being serious here.

So, tra la la, I went ahead and bought it.  After the initial trial when I stuck it on the side of my helmet and recorded sideways video of me ponying Elliot from Sammy in their tendon rehab walk workout this afternoon (you’re welcome for sparing you having to see that.  It is stomach churning), I subsequently dropped my new camera on our grill (which was closed and off, thank you Universe) but the impact still managed to ruin the plastic thingy it is supposed to rest in if you want to attach it to a tripod (as if – this 2″ thing on a 4′ tripod would be such an embarrassment that it begs a Donald Trump small hands joke, but I digress.)  So, instead of attaching the sticky velcro to the tripod holder, I white-trashed it and slapped that sticky velcro right on both the camera and the helmet, joined them up and voi la!  helmet cam.  You will see the downside of this plan momentarily.  

Experimentally, I took the dogs for a walk at dusk with my helmet cam, which, yes, means that I, like a huge dweeb, walked the dogs wearing a riding helmet.  Rockin’ it loud and proud, I was.  But the brilliance of living in central Iowa is that the likelihood of seeing another person when you don’t want to see another person actually approaches zero.  Cheers to living in a state with a declining population.  At any rate, during the dog walk, I learned that the camera doesn’t work that well when I am scanning forward into the sunset at the young dogs tearing off, and then looking back, away from the sunset to keep an eye on the one-speed newf bringing up the back of the pack.  Maybe that test would be a little hard for any camera. So I threw the data from that failed experiment out.

I got back home and settled the tired dogs (“A tired dog is a good dog” ~ Kate Hladky) in the yard and set about working with Howdy.  First I let him prance about the arena a bit.  Now, before you look at the following clips, note that I didn’t see any of them until I saw all  of them.  I didn’t know that:

• The music sounds egregiously loud.  It really wasn’t that loud, this camera just picks up everything.  (That’s my story anyway.)
• The camera is aimed too high.  You will get to see a lot of horse body and very little of horse legs.  Sort of like watching a duck on a lake.  This is the downside of the white trash-esque attachment of the camera to the helmet – you have to do some experimentation to get it right and how I am going to reproduce it when I do get it right remains mysterious to me.  So I have that to look forward to.
• I cluck and kiss at horses a lot and I have no idea why I apparently have begun to think that the word “trot” has two syllables.  Oy vey.

He doesn’t have bad movement for a horse with a slight club foot, an osteochondroma and stifle effusion.  No horse is perfect and if you look hard enough with enough technology and quality vets, you can scare yourself silly.

Then I put him on the lunge line and went to the left.  During the first minute of the video there are a couple of somewhat exciting horse antics.  Wheeee!  5 year old thoroughbreds.

Now if you are looking for some fun, compare going left to going right.  Also, side note, the dogs are apparently not that tired, since halfway through this video they start barking/howling with the local coyotes. Pfffft.  Not a-one of them would survive two days in the wild, but, like a 40 year old man who stumbles upon a high school basketball open gym, they’re gonna put it on and throw down what they got.

And then there is your daily eye picture.  Recall how it started out and you’ll see that it is improved today.  And thanks to the miracle that is Mac Photos and the included extension Markup (did I mention I’m a techie girl?), I present this: 

And tomorrow we’re off to ISU ophthalmology for a check up.  Wish us luck, please.