Yee haw!

I've lived in Prairieville for nine months and haven't explored much outside the city. Sure, I've covered stories all over green country, but I haven't taken any time to enjoy the local flavor.

A couple months ago, a Miami reporter, Dave found me on flickr and invited me to add my photos to a TV news group. He and I e-mailed a couple times, I joined the group and also added him as a flickr contact. Ever since then I have enjoyed seeing the adventures that he and his wife Angie take all across Florida.

The two of them frequent every kind of local attraction be it farmer's market or tourist trap. I swear they've seen all of Southern Florida.

The two of them inspired me to get out there and check some stuff out. I actually stopped at the local Welcome center, grabbed a whole crapload of brochures, and hit the open road.



I had been meaning to drive up and check out the Will Roger's Memorial. I don't know much about him, other than the fact that he was quite handy with a lasso.



Any guy with a tomb and memorial this big must have been important. Turns out he was a cowboy, actor, journalist, humorist, public speaker, joke presidential candidate and all around down to earth Okie.

And what tomb is complete without a semi-creepy statue?



After the memorial, I checked out Will's birthplace and stopped to relax at the lake. But the day wasn't over.

Turns out the Will Roger's Rodeo was in town for the weekend. I haven't been to a rodeo since..... ahhhhhhhhhh...... probably junior high. And when in Prairieville.....





I really had a great time. Bucking broncos, speedy barrel racers, mutton busting, it's all quite entertaining. Unfotunately I didn't get the memo about the uniform. Everyone and their mom and grandma were wearing boots, wranglers, plaid botton down shirt, cowboy hat, shiny belt with a buckle the size of their face.

And me in shorts and a t-shirt... At least I'll be prepared for next time.

Sat truck?

Wanna see my station's new satellite truck?



Yup. That's a F150 with a satellite dish in the back. And the coolest part? You just push a button and it finds the bird all by itself. I simply run some cable and make a phone call telling them I'm ready. That's it. Well, there's a generator, and some other cables to connect, but you get the idea.

I pulled sat truck duty on Wednesday. The sports guy and I drove out of town to cover the conference baseball tournament. He shoots his own stuff, so I just had to drive and get him on TV.

Sometimes I'm amazed at what I get paid to do.



Once we got our media passes, I made sure Ben didn't need me anymore and made my way to a hot dog and a stadium seat.



Warm, sunny, hot dogs and baseball.
Dude. Could you get much better than that?



Things got a little crazy about a half an hour before our hit. We couldn't edit in the truck and had to feed back raw. And we fed back late because our Idol coverage ran late. But the biggest issue is that this new truck doesn't have IFB yet. It's a bit of a challenge focusing, white balancing, setting up lights, and trying to talk on the phone to the producers at the same time. I wouldn't recommend it.

All in all, Wednesday was a pretty good day.

Two?

I just realized this afternoon as I was driving into work that I've now been "in TV" for two years. I don't remember the exact start date... But I know I started the first job a short three days after graduating from college. Talk about leaping before you look. But I haven't looked back.

I've worked at three stations in only two years, but I each place was exactly what I needed at the time.

The first knocked me down a few notches and showed me that I wasn't "all that." The second gave me a chance to run away from home and make the mistakes that you're supposed to make as a first timer. It was there I learned about deadlines, I learned about pressure, I learned about pushing myself, I learned about friendship, and I learned all about terrible management, and I loved it all.

Here at station three, I'm constantly learning something new. Even the stressful days have redeeming value. I have learned to think more creatively. I have learned how to tell a better story. Every day poses a new challenge.

I have learned so much about the job, and about myself in such a short amount of time. I'm only a young pup and still have so much to learn. No matter how much I may get irritated by the TV news beast, I'm always grateful that my job does not leave me rotting behind a desk for eight hours a day.

As an "approximate" anniversary celebration, I got to do a road construction story tonight. Oh, yes. I know you're jealous.

I'm actually quite happy with the result. Seeing that my reporter, Justin and I encountered a bit of a time crunch there at the end.

We got back to the station at 6.
Justin voiced and gave me the script at 7:10.
I finished editing at 8:10.
We loaded into the live truck and drove across town.
After some issues with the signal, a long cable run and some sprinting back and forth, we were up for our slot at the top of the show at 9.

I was just glad to get it all done.
It's a bonus that the story turned out well and the liveshot looked good.

It's all I could ask for.

*note: Linking to my station's website is a challenge. I had a link up, but it didn't work all that well. I'm working on a way to get a story up. I'll keep you posted.

Mother's Day

I couldn't spend Mother's Day with my Mom, but I had the urge to do something she would like. So I went to the Rose Garden.






It was a perfect day outside.

Happy Mother's Day, MOM!

Good day

I didn't sleep well last night.

Who could with the blinding lightning and earth shattering thunder? Needless to say, I did not jump out of bed this morning, and I went to work less than energetic.

I moped around the newsroom while I waited for the morning meeting to break, and all I wanted to do as go home. Besides being tired, it's also sweeps. The time of year that we go out of our way to cover the most uninspiring stories. And if I had to do another sex offender story.... I just don't know what I'd do....

All the overnight storms caused flash flooding and washed out several roads in a neighboring community. And I got that story. I wasn't too excited about it at first. We had to find some who had tried to drive through the water and got swept away. And we also had to find a physicist to tell us why cars float. Yeah.

Well, to my surprise, the stars aligned and gave my reporter and I a great story.

Turns out:

There's a wildlife sanctuary just outside town. The creek that runs across their grounds broke it's banks. A couple tiger pens got flooded and three of the kitties had to tread in five feet of water (they're fine). Well, on his way to help clean-up at the sanctuary, Frank (a volunteer) ignored a "road closed" sign and tired to drive across standing water. Instead of floating away, Frank and his Jeep fell into a sinkhole five feet deep. Ah, ha! Our victim! We got great video of the wrecker pulling his truck out of the hole, the rushing water, the broken concrete, and Frank all nervous about his car. He then took us to the sanctuary where we got great video of the flooded lawn, the wet tigers, debris clinging up to five feet from the ground, thick mud, and a small cabin that was picked up and floated 20 feet into a fence.

Oh, could you even ask for more? Well, we got it.

We needed to find a washed out road next. On out way out we missed a turn and encountered exactly that. It wasn't that deep, but the water was rushing across at river speed. SWEET! Great nat sound, great video, my reporter even waded out into it for some teases and a taped intro. And I didn't even have to persuade her to do it.

Oh we had good stuff. But we had to run across town to meet our physicist. He could make or break the story. And once again, we got lucky. He had an experiment set up. He explained it well. And more importantly, his experiment was visual and illustrated the idea perfectly.

Now all we had to do was get it written and edited.

It was close. My reporter wrote it well. I took the scripts and put down all the nats, track and soundbytes. Fifteen seconds over. We whittled away the fat and I tackled the rest of the editing. It was tight, but everything was going well. Until 10 minutes before five the video I needed would not transfer onto the timeline. I ran out of the edit bays and yelled for my reporter to re-digitize my second tape. I jumped to the end and put that together. Five minutes to 5 and the video is back in the system. I fill in the holes, add audio transitions and send it to the Tape operator without watching it.

I jump out of the edit bay and let the booth know my story's in. I see my reporter at her desk and give her the thumbs up. I can see she's stressed. She comes over and we turn up the TV. The anchors toss to her story and neither of us breathes. I was praying for no black holes, no weird audio flubs, no flash frames...

Two minutes later, we both take a deep breathe in. We did it.

So, the short version - tigers treading water, jeep in a sinkhole, road turned river, and a physicist with a demonstration, good writing, tight edit, good story.

It was a good day.