So Far The Tally Is...

If you're keeping score at home then the math works out like this for what I've shot this week:

3 Homicides
3 House Fires (one was 1 mile from my house)
2 Police officers arraigned for rape
1 Fatal Motorcycle Accident
1 Child Kidnapping
1 Stabbing

It seems like after Memorial Day, the world goes crazy. Ehh, it keeps me busy overnight.

Ever Wonder??

What your favorite local anchor or reporter looks like in the morning without their makeup on for the air..

Mystery solved..

Nothing Says Fun Like....

Your morning show reporter wearing a Vegas showgirl type headdress.

Yup...class.

Snake Bit

It was a frustrating day today and a wet one. We went to the Akron Zoo for a live shot. It promised to be a fun morning. A Kinkajou, turkey vultures, Lemurs and penguins were on the agenda. Sadly it was not to be. We get down to the Akron Zoo and I call in to establish my shot. I'm told that the Akron receive site is not working. In fact it hasn't worked in months. Crap, that's a new one on me. So, I'm told we're trying all our other sites. The closest is in Canton. Should be hittable and it was, but we're low and the signal isn't good enough for air. I move the truck and try again to all available receive horns. No dice.

So we go to plan B. Shooting look lives and driving far enough north that I could hit a site to feed back our recorded hits. I find a parking lot on a hill high enough to ensure a signal. As I'm rotating to one of our sites my reporter, Jacque, yells "LIGHTNING!!" and runs away from the truck. I drop the mast and join Jacque way far away from the truck until the mast is down.

Off we went again to find a spot that was close enough to a usable site and now free from lightning. Finally we find a spot to establish successfully and feed back only one of our recorded hits because we're in the last half hour of our show. So, as I'm feeding back the turkey vulture look live, it isn't usable do to numerous hits on the tape. I cross my fingers and feed back the kinkajou look live which graciously is sans video hits.

And to top it off, I'm fighting a losing battle with poison ivy or poison oak on my arms. I'm so incredibly uncomfortable and bathed a pale pink from calamine lotion.

My kingdom for some 40 grit sandpaper right now...ARRRRGGGGHHH!!

5am @ Jacobs Field live shot. I love my job!

Accident!!!

My reporter and I were in MVA yesterday returning back from a live shot.We were hit by a teenage driver who wasn't paying attention and pulled out into an intersection while I was driving through it. I swerved left to avoid him but I couldn't go into the other lane due to oncoming traffic. The kid is lucky that he didn't pull out earlier or I'd have T-boned his little Chevy Cavalier with my Econoline van. I have no explanation of why he chose to pull out into the intersection because there was oncoming traffic in the lane he wanted to get into.

But everybody was alright save for the Cavalier which wound up missing it's front bumper, both headlights and damage to its hood and both from quarter panels.

The cop that took the report walks up and says, "Wanting to make your own news??"

Thanks officer...

Pucker Time

Ok, now first off I am going to clarify that this WAS NOT ME THAT DID THIS. I'd like to tell you to go back and re-read the first sentence. I'll wait...

Hmm...la...la..la.. Done? Kewl. We can continue.

I walked out to the garage to unload my gear from my live truck when I happened to look over at another live truck and discover this.



Now this looks like someone placed their tripod on top of the roof of this live truck to get it out of the way. Maybe an engineer fixing something in the back. It may have been a prank on one photog to another. It could have been, but it wasn't.

The truck had just returned from a live shot around eight miles from the station and took a route that was all highway back.

Can you imagine the destruction a tripod falling off the roof of the truck could have caused, especially on a busy highway?

God was looking out for the photog, that is for sure.

I WIsh I'd Known

Tuesday morning I was scheduled to do beauty shots because my reporter had a national story to front back in the studio. So, I decided to go to the East 55th Marina here in Cleveland to get said beauty shots. The view looks back at the skyline of Cleveland and Lake Erie, plus you can get beautiful sunrise shots from there.

I got to the marina at 4:40a.m. after checking out a water main break which gave me just enough time to set up and get a picture on the air for our 5 a.m. show. Our show started and while I was up on the air, a Park Ranger drove by, flashed his brights and drove off.

I was the only person at the marina except for an empty black Ford Taurus that was parked about thirty feet from me. I did about five shots with only the seagull calls matching my IFB for background noise. Around 6:15 a Cleveland Police car came around and he stopped to chat. We B.S.'ed for a few minutes until they called for another shot from me. The officer left and I went back and finished out the show at 7 a.m.

I headed back to the station, only to get sent out to cover a body found in a house. It turned out to be an accidental CO poisoning. I headed back to the station to bump into our 7:30 photog, Shane, ingesting video he'd shot at the East 55th Marina this morning when it was light. There are cops all over his video.

I ask him what he shot at the marina. He tells me a fisherman found a woman who had been assaulted there. I told Shane I was there since a quarter to five in the morning. His jaw dropped and he said they figure that she was laying there since 4 a.m. The Taurus that was there was hers.

The woman had been in shock when a fisherman found her. She stated screaming when he approached and he called 911. She never screamed, moaned or made any type of noise.

She'd been less than 30 feet from me over a little embankment and I'd never seen her. She was laying there needing help and I never knew it.

I'm still upset about it.