Home for the Holidays

So, I went home for a couple of days to visit the family. It's good to see the folks and great to have my daughters visiting their grandparents. I won't go into great detail about the visit other than to say we still wish we could be closer to home. I would, however, like to share a trip down memory lane as I was driving around town one day.

I grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky. A town of about 70-80 thousand where everybody knows your name and probably knows your father's name, too. Owensboro was recently named the best sports town in Kentucky by Sports Illustrated. It's also the home of Moonlite Bar-B-Q. Notice how I spelled it. Not the way it's spelled in North Carolina, barbeque. Oh, sure, Webster's will most likely spell it the latter, but I kinda like the hyphenated way.

Also on my drive I went past the house I grew up in. We moved into the old brick house when I was three and all I can say is it was a great house, a great neighborhood. My best friend Billy, lived around the corner. We played a lot of basketball in our respective driveways and it was always fun beating him and his little brother in some one-on-two.

Speaking of sports, I cruised past my old high school. Owensboro High School, better known as Owensboro Senior, is where I learned to knock the snot out of whomever lined up across from me on the gridiron. Unfortunately, I never really learned the basics of English. Maybe that's why my blog sometimes goes on forever, with neverending sentences and poor punctuation, you tell me. But, I can tell you I played football with NFL pros Mark Higgs, Kenny Willis, and Vince Buck. We also won a state championship.

While in high school and my first year of college, I worked at the Owensboro Marina. It was the boat dock on the Ohio River. Here I learned from owner Walt Meschko that the customer is always WRONG. That's right. Walt, a cross between Grizly Adams and the homeless man down on the corner, was the antithesis of a successful business owner. He basically ran off anyone who disagreed with him, said something remotely vulger, or just didn't kiss his butt. Don't get me wrong, as a football-playin', testosterone-filled, overzealous teen, I liked nothing more than struttin' my stuff on the dock and telling anyone where they could go. It just didn't set me up real well for what most would consider normal management. None-the-less, I enjoyed my summers wearing flip-flops, cut-off shorts, no shirt and watching the barges go by.

So that's my brief trip down memory lane. I'll not bore you with any more specifics, besides, the wife might be reading since it is the holidays and she's got a little more time than usual. I wouldn't want her reading anything about my high school exploits, right?

Merry Christmas

With the most wonderful holiday quickly upon us, I thought it a good time to write my version of our Christmas letter. We've all received these letters this time of year. You know the ones, some a little anoying (at least Darrell admits it) but most rather comical. I hope to be more of the latter.

Our year started much like many previous ones. A promise to get to the gym more often and eat right. I don't remember how long that lasted but I do know how it's ended, I just finished off some Oreos and a big glass of milk. And it's closing in on midnight!

In February I had my seventh trip to Daytona for Speedweeks. This trip is always something I look forward to, yet at the same time I'm dreading it. It's not so bad covering NASCAR in Florida in the middle of winter. On the other hand, the days are long, the Speedway officials act like Nazis and two weeks away from the family gets harder every year.

March brought one of my favorite times of year, the NCAA tournament. I went to Syracuse with sports director Rich Brenner and sat truck operator Danny Spilane to cover the Tar Heels. Now, as an avid Kentucky Wildcat fan this was not the easiest thing in the world, especially when I had to watch my beloved Cats fall to Michigan State from the comforts of a satellite truck in a cold and dreary Carrier Dome parking lot. Not to mention the fact I missed my youngest daughter's first birthday. Oh yea, I almost forgot about the trip to Syracuse. Somewhere just south of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania we got stuck in a snow storm, and when I say stuck, I mean stuck! From just after 6pm to somewhere around 2am, yep over 8 hours, we sat on I-81 in the Poconos. It seems a tractor trailer had jacknifed and it took that long to get the mess cleaned up. Let's just say thank God for XM radio.

My wife and I celebrated our 14th anniversary in May just like many of the previous ones. Working in television means I can't get a vacation in May. Lis is a very understanding woman, though, and we always manage to make the best of it by going to dinner and... enjoying each other's company. OK, enough sappiness for now.

The family vacation again was spent in Myrtle Beach, SC. We've come to appreciate this overcrowded, overpriced, ultracommercialized piece of paradise. Lauren loves the ocean and Kingston Plantation, where we stay, has a water park that she could live at.
Some days we did! It was also nice to see Lauren becoming more of a big sister to Caroline as she showed her the ropes around Ripley's Aquarium, many times shouting, "Caroline, look at the sharks, they won't eat you."

June brought the US Open to North Carolina. Yours truly was selected to go run the sat truck and shoot a little. Pinehurst was perfect and it can't come back here soon enough. I know if they could they'd bring it to Pinehurst every few years.

The rest of the summer was pretty uneventful until Lauren's first day of school. Believe it or not, she was very excited to go to Kindergarten. It's really brought her out of her shell, too. Caroline continues to ask when Lauren's bus is coming and looks forward to her coming home every day.

October was a very special month for my entire family. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding aniversary. My parents were surprised to see some of us. My wife and daughters drove home to Kentucky and my dad's brother and his wife flew in from California. It was a Golden moment seeing their faces as we met them at the church for a renewing of vows.

Now, Christmas is close at hand and the girls are more excited than ever. I'd like to get a little sappy and say how fortunate we are to be surrounded by good friends, neighbors and a wonderful family. Merry Christmas to you all and most joyous New Year. I look forward to many more with you all.

Control the Show

Fox8's own Chad Tucker and photojournalist Eddie Hughes recently did a story in Winston-Salem about a Wake Forest student who lets internet surfers control the Christmas lights on his house. So, I went to controltheshow.com and checked it out.

I must say, if you don't have to wait very long it's pretty entertaining. Once on the website you can enter a queue to get in line. I was on earlier tonight and only had to wait a couple of minutes. Once you get control of the show you click on a series of toggle switches to turn lights on/off and change the color of some. You can even turn them all off, something I'm sure the neighbors can appreciate for a few seconds.

Anyway, check it out. And, log on early, the show stops at midnight.

You Know You're a Photog When...

Lenslinger found this over on b-roll.net, the website of news photogs everywhere. Here are some from the site:

You know a shortcut around the eternal red light, avoiding the drawbridge, through the projects and behind the courthouse. -- Blues Daddy

You see the days light progress through the kelvin scale. -- Aussie

You're on vacation in Disney World, watching the local news in you're in your hotel room, and you start yelling at the photographer for his poor shot composition. -- TheBluesisStill#1

After watering the lawn, you figure-eight the garden hose. -- Newshutr

Your kids think it's normal for you to come home for lunch one day and after bedtime the next. -- Blues Daddy

You've never seen a hockey game with both eyes. -- Tyna

You can talk on the phone, listen to the scanner, search for the smoke plume on the horizon and eat a seven-layer burrito while steering with your knee going 75 on the freeway. -- Blues Daddy

You own more than five articles of clothing(including ball caps) with either your station logo on it or a logo from ANY station. -- SmlMktChief

everyone at family parties asks you to take the pics at xmas. -- Salty Photog

So, this got me to thinking about silly things I do... besides all the ones mentioned before. I can think of a few.

Like the fact I can not watch movies and especially television without noticing a bad edit. You know, like when an actor is holding a cup in one hand and then in the next frame he's got it in the other. These things happen more than you think.

Or how about the other day at my daughter's Christmas program. There I am in the front row (gotta get the best view, you know) and while I'm videotaping, I turn the camera around toward my wife's clapping hands. "What are you doing?" she asked. "I just need a cutaway." Now that's messed up.

K'vegas Gets a Visit

The Piedmont Triad. It's the region in North Carolina made up of Winston-Salem to the Northwest, Greensboro to the Northeast and High Point to the south. Kernersville sits right in the middle. We affectionately call it K'vegas. When our country was in its infancy, Kernersville had a little visit from a very important person. George Washington made a stop for breakfast in this small town. Last week another George W made a little stop. Yep, George W. Bush came to the Deere-Hitachi plant to talk about the economy.

The call came late Friday night. It went something like this, "Kenny we need you to get the live truck in place by 6:30am Monday for the President's visit." My Assignment Manager went on, "Secret Service will do their sweep at 7:30 and you can get back inside at 10:30 when Brent will meet up with you."

So my day starts at 5:30 to get Live 4 loaded and make my short drive to Kernersville. Problem one of the day, not enough gas in Live 4. OK, stop and get some on the way, no big deal. Unfortunately, the battery that was just replaced only days before had run down again. (I told those mechanics the alternator was bad!) So in the pouring rain at 6am there aren't a lot of people pulling in to get gas. After a few phone calls to the station to see if anyone can make it to me in less than 30 minutes and finally a kind gentleman pulls in and says he can indeed jump start my live van. Problem 2 of the day solved.

I arrive at the Deere-Hitachi plant with plenty of time to spare and start a line of satellite trucks and live vans at a gate around back, not the place where we all thought we'd be and worries pop into my head about whether or not we can get a live shot out of this location. Oh well, go where Secret Service tells us. Now, I see that most of my competition not only has about 4 crew members to help pull cables, set up tripod, lights, camera, check mics, check cables, etc... but they also have support vehicles to take them away once they're set up. That's OK, I've pulled cable on longer runs than this and I don't mind sitting in the truck for a few hours, I could get some reading done. Less than an hour later, I've got a great spot and have video coming from the camera to the truck. No time to check the audio as Secret Service is running us out.

Three hours pass and it's time to get inside and meet up with Brent who's come in another vehicle and checked in through the media entrance around the front of the building. As I try to enter through the same door I'd come in and out of 20 times earlier that morning I'm stopped and told we can no longer come in this door, I have to go to the front of the building. How do I get there? You must walk around the building, in the cold, in the pouring rain. After explaining myself to every Kernersville cop, and Forsyth County deputy along the way, I finally make it to the media entrance at the front.

So, now that I've met up Brent I need to make sure all connections and cables are right with the live truck. Hmmmmm, that means I have to go out the door I was just told we couldn't go in and out of. I ask and am told that we can now go through the door with proper credentials. I have those. To the truck, dial in IFB, check the signal from the camera and the mic and take an extra audio cable for backup. As I head to the door I'm stopped by a Kernersville police officer who informs me that once I went outside a certain perimeter to get to my truck I now have to go around the building to the front! Well, this is pretty much unacceptable as I've got to be able to make trips back and forth to the live truck for systems checks. I get the attention of a Secret Service agent who says, yes, the patrol officer is correct but he'd make an exception this one time. OK, now that I'm back inside I can not go back out. A phone call to the our Assistant News Director and soon Chris Weaver is on his way to take over live truck duties. I think he was a little pleased he didn't have to stand in the rain with all the folks along the streets watching the president drive by.

The rest of the day was a series of live cut-ins before the president arrived at the plant and then live coverage of the entire 45 minute speech. A quick dash into the crowd to get some interviews after Mr. Bush left and we had our package shot. Now we just had to wait for Secret Service to open the doors to let us out so we could edit and go live again at the front of the plant. After jump starting the live truck again Brent and I were on our way to making TV for the five and six o'clock newscasts.


The packages and live shots went off without a hitch albeit in the freezing rain, and it was time to get loaded up and leave. Oh yea, one more jumpstart of live four and take it back to the bureau. I made it home about 7:30. Ah, the exciting life of television news all to see the leader of our country tell me he's brilliant for giving some tax cuts. Sorry W, tell it to someone who didn't have a 14 hour day.

SNOW!!!

Only one thing trumps the coverage of a severe thunderstorm in the television news business. SNOW. Yep, if there's a chance a snowflake will fall in the piedmont, no, the state, we've got to have a crew covering it, team coverage if it's in our area. Last week the first significant snowfall was expected in the mountains of North Carolina. So, yours truly and ace reporter Brent Campbell were off to the mountains to capture its full glory.

After loading up the live truck, something I hate to do when driving into a snowstorm because it's basically a top heavy van that most people wouldn't be caught dead in driving in hazardous conditions. But we have to be live so we start our treck west in the van.

Our first stop comes when we get to the Blue Ridge Parkway and see some snow covered trees and a nice overlook if we need to go live from here later in the day. We continue on to the college town of Boone. We unload camera and tripod on the beautiful campus of Appalachian State as the snow is falling. Unfortunately, it's only flurries, and not much on the ground. Some beauty shots of campus and a couple of interviews with students who say this is no big deal (it really isn't) and we need to find some lunch.

Over lunch we discuss driving another half hour to Beech Mountain, the highest ski resort east of the Mississippi. Surely they've got some snow coming down up there. A quick call to our favorite PR rep Gil and he says "come on up, the skiing's great!"

Now, those who know Brent and I are aware that we never miss a meal, so after the best French Onion soup (you get scissors to cut the cheese on top) and sandwich, we head up the mountain to Ski Beech.

Along the way, we pass Grandfather Mountain and notice it's covered in snow and ice, not an unusual site this time of year. Little did we know it was a precurser of things to come. We blew through Banner Elk and passed by Sugar Mountain while barely noticing because we couldn't SEE the slopes. Normally when driving up Hwy. 184 you go right past the slopes of Sugar, so to not see them because of the snow should've clued us in on the conditions to come. It didn't.

We continued on our quest to get the best snow video and best possilbe live shot location and show the competition who's number one, oops, the News Leader. As I mentioned earlier, we're not in our trusty unit 3, an Explorer with four-wheel drive and about 130,000 hard miles. No, we're in a top-heavy Ford van with rear-wheel drive. After negotiating one-to-many switchbacks I came to the conclusion that we weren't gonna make it to the top of Beech Mountain, which meant no live shot. As I called our Assistant News Director to give him the news I tried to think of a way to keep him happy. I started by telling him I have good news and bad news. He wanted the bad news first. "Kevin, bad news is we aren't gonna make it to Beech Mountain." Silence on the other end. Mr. Daniels replies with, "you said you had good news?" So I told him, "we aren't gonna make it to Beech Mountain," pause for effect, "because we're in a blizzard!" The constant birrage of "no way" told me the boss didn't believe us. We sent pictures via our cell phones and suddenly we were the lead for both shows with live picutres and video throughout the newscasts.

Obviously, we still had a story to shoot but it was like shooting fish in a barrell. We pulled off the road at a local ski shop and found a couple of guys willing to stand out in the snowstorm long enough for us to interview them. One was skiing to work, too cool. After taking a beating for a half an hour and shooting about as much as I could (after being nearly blown over with camera and tripod) it was time to make the hour trip back to that spot we found earlier on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Safely back to the parkway overlooking the foothills, Brent began the task of listening to soundbites, and writing to the video I had bagged. While he came up with the words of our story, I needed to get the live shot set up. Now, even though we were a good 70 miles or more from our Winston-Salem tower there was nothing blocking our line of sight because we were some 3700 feet up on the east facing side of a mountain. With lights set up and a nice spot for our live shot I gave a little prayer for some snow to fall during our live shot.

Once Brent was finished with the writing, I began the editing process, made all the easier now that we have our non-linear editing in our trucks and our still-new-to-us XD Cams. One package, two vo's and a couple of teases edited and our first live shot went off without a hitch. We even got a little snow to come into the picture during the live shot.

After editing and feeding the six package back to the studio in High Point, we were ready for our six o'clock live shot. And, as if coming from the Heavens, it began to snow like you wouldn't believe. Needless to say, the producers and everyone back at the studio loved it. So, our day came to an end; after driving back an hour and half to the bureau and unloading the live truck, I was able to get home in time to see the kids to bed.

Two Months

It's been just over two months since my last post, so I guess this one should be a doosey, huh? Well, sorry to disappoint the only reader I still have, but this post is just to let you know I'm back. Upcoming in the next couple of hours... A recent visit to snow covered Beech Mountain, another Presidential visit to the Piedmont, and why daddy has been in bed for two days.