How To Tell It's Going To Be An Interesting Day

When you come home and find your wife stranded on the roof of the house because the ladder that she was using collapsed, stranding her there for about 20 minutes..

She was taking down the Christmas lights.

God, I wanted to just walk into the house and pretend I couldn't hear her talking to me....

Zumba

This morning started a week long series of live shots for me and my reporter Jacque on Shaping up for your swimsuit. Basically, we're showing you how to get in shape for your summer swimsuit. We were at a dance studio that has classes in Zumba. It's basically fitness dancing to latin music. It started in Columbia pretty much by accident. You can read more about Zumba, here.

Arriving at the dance studio this morning, we were told that we'd have at least fifteen people for the demonstration. Wonderful, we thought. It's usually a whole lot more people that show up for our live shot demonstrations so we were psyched.

Until they showed up. There were a whole lot of 15, 16 and 17 year old girls plus a few women in their early 30's that would be "Zumbaing". Now normally being a red blooded, heterosexual male you'd think I'd be in Nirvana. Well.....

Let me tell you. I've never seen a cleaner dance floor and better electrical work on the ceiling as I examined the conduit work done by the electricians. I just couldn't look at the young girls. I felt....dirty. The moves that Zumba involves made me realize that if I saw anymore that I'd already seen, I'd be showing up on the next Dateline sting.

I'm not usually a prude but damn, I think I'm getting old too fast for my own good.

And it really, really sucks.

Don't You Just Love...

When the replacement(read: not much experience) for your regular assignment desk person misses a fatal police involved shooting and you don't find out about it until four hours later when the other stations have it at the beginning of their newcasts?

Yep. Makes the whole morning just an enjoyable funfest playing catch-up...

Where's the tequila??

Lookeee Who

Look who showed up in the Boy Scout Found package that we aired repeatedly this morning. Yep, it's our own Chris Weaver from TVPhotogBlog. I really enjoy his blog but something about this picture bothers me. I'm hesitant to say why because I like Chris and I don't want to make him angry.

Oh, to hell with it. It's plain old Weaver just showing off his incredible photog skills. Doesn't it just reek of "Oh, look at me...I'm so good, I don't even need to use the viewfinder."

Win Emmys and see what happens??

(Of course this is all tongue in cheek. I respect Chris a lot. It was just a chance to razz him and a shock to see him actually working...)

Test mobile blogger.

Week In Review

The week started off with an interesting story. An earthquake shook Northeast Ohio with a 3.6 on the Richer scale. The epicenter was in a little town about twenty miles south of where I live, named Shalersville. We went out to the town next to it, Mantua, and they never felt it either. Made for an interesting live shot because no one felt it there.

Tuesday was a warm weather day. It hit 71 degrees here and for early March in Cleveland, that is remarkable in itself. Nothing spectacular on Tuesday except for bright sunshine, warm weather and driving with the windows down and the radio turned up.

They say that you've never lived until you've held a three week old black bear cub and had a baby camel suck on your hand (ok, maybe they don't...). We did a live shot at the Cleveland Sport and Outdoor show where we played with baby animals and then got a demonstration of lumberjack sports. My reporter tried her hand at axe throwing. It's always dangerous when you give a reporter sharp objects especially ones that can be thrown but my reporter did pretty well.

Thursday was covering damage from an F-0 tornado that touched down in Elyria. Did a little damage. It rained all night, then the temperature dropped. It turned into snow which caused us to have to change our story from damage to traffic conditions. Thing was, the ground temperature was too warm for it to stick to the roads so there really wasn't a problem with rush hour traffic that morning. But we stood by the interstate reporting on the "bad traffic" conditions for three hours.

Friday was good day for a live shot. Since St. Patrick's Day falls on Saturday, we went to an Irish pub and covered them cooking up lots of good Irish food. It's always nice when you're fed on a live shot. Although, the corned beef, cabbage and shepard;s pie I had is not sitting well with my wife today. As much as I hate Paddy's day, It's still good to be fed.

Hopefully I'll have the time to post more on the actual days that things happen next week. It's just been busy with my father-in-law still in the hospital.

My Father In Law

He's a tough old man. He turns 84 today. He's spending his birthday in the hospital, sadly. He's been blacking out and falling recently. He wore a halter monitor for 24 hours and they found that his heart was stopping at times between 2 and 7 seconds. He was at the doctor's office to gt the results when he passed out in front of the doctor.

So, tomorrow, he will get a pacemaker put in to get his heart back to normal again. My FIL is a member of the greatest generation. A paratrooper on D-Day, he won a Silver Star and 2 Bronze Stars. He will not talk about what he did or saw in World War 2. I've talked about his unwillingness to talk about it, even to record it for his grand children. I have to respect his wishes. If it is that terrible, I'm sure he revisits it many more times than he wants to.

So, please, if you read this blog, say an extra prayer for my Father In Law. We're losing our greatest generation quicker each day. And we're forgetting them.

Back To The Grind

I'm heading back to work on Monday. It's been great having the week off but I'm getting antsy and missing the action of work. I did get to head off to Pittsburgh for a two days to visit dear friends of mine. They both help me recharge my batteries plus, being around them makes me feel like I'm back home again.

I can't truthfully say I'm looking forward to getting up at zero dark thirty after sleeping in for most of the week but it's good to get back into the grind.

Oh, one thing I did do on my vacation was buy a new personal car. It's not really new but it damn sure was close to it. It's a 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis. It only had 12,493 miles on it. For a 2003. It had to have been driven just in the summer because it's a rear wheel drive car. The title is perfect and it was clean as a whistle. I didn't plan on buying a car but my 98 Exploder that had 217k miles on it started to give up the ghost. The transmission was slipping something awful and I wasn't going to put $1000.00 plus into a vehicle with that many miles on it.



So, now I'm driving an old person's car. So, if you see a 30 something photog driving with his left blinker constantly on and only doing 25 m.p.h., honk in a nice manner. It's me getting into the moment.

Can't Come Soon Enough

I'm still on vacation but as I look out the window and it continues to snow, I feel like sacrificing some small fuzzy animal to the gods that control the seasonal changes here in Northeastern Ohio.

I may need to do this because the stories overnight have been few and far between because of the cold and snow. Now stories usually do tend to drop off during the winter time. People generally don't kill each other as readily as they do in the spring and summer. I guess most of them are two cold to want to kill their fellow man. Not that murder doesn't happen. It just seems to be quite less in the winter.

So, in the sake of the prediction of Punxatawney Phil, please let the spring be an early spring. I want to cover more stories over night.

Yeah, call me selfish.

What A Week

After dealing with a bout of the flu that wiped me out for four days and the specter of mass flooding because of rising temperatures and "heavy" rain melting the snow and ice that are around here (didn't really happen...just a little localized flooding), I really needed this day and the upcoming week off.

I'm on vacation until the week of March 9th.

w00t!!

A Night At The "Still Mill"

I grew up in Pittsburgh which in it's heyday was known as the steel capital of the world. Today however,my hometown is now a technology and medical city. I'd never been in a working steel mill(pronounced still mill to you non-Pittsburgh people) while working in Pittsburgh. I've driven by a few, the closest was the Edgar Thompson works in Braddock, PA but never been inside an actual working mill. Until yesterday.

All this week, I've been shooting these stories, "A Night At....". Basically a take off on the movie A Night At The Museum. We've been showing the things that come alive at night when you are asleep. Last night Obie, my reporter, and I shot at the A.G. Mittal steel mill here in downtown Cleveland.

It was fascinating to say the least. What I didn't expect was to be able to feel the heat radiating off these slabs from so far away. Things are kinda hot at 2000 degrees even when doused with water and being flattened into giant rolls of steel.

Another thing I didn't count on was waking up this morning with aching sinuses and blocked nasal passages. Pardon me for being graphic here, but I've been blowing out black crap today every time I blow my nose. I really don't know how the guys that work these mills can stand it. Maybe they're so used to it by now. God bless them for dealing with it. Lord knows, I couldn't.

I just want to be able to breathe normally again and stop expelling the black crap out my nostrils.

Ever Give A Mast A Bear Hug?

What am I doing in this picture?



I'm pressing the azimuth CCW button, for the dish on our satellite truck, in vain. Our truck operator, Gary, is up on the roof stomping his foot when he wants me to press the button. Why are we doing all of this? We're trying to save a live shot at the Kalahari Water Park that I mentioned in a post recently. Our dish has frozen. It will tilt, but it won't pan at all. It is so cold and windy outside with below zero temperatures for both air temp and wind chill that the dish is refusing to work. In all reality, I couldn't blame it.

We worked on the dish for a good two and a half hours and it wouldn't budge. Gary and I were constantly alternating between outside the truck and inside the truck, trying to thaw ourselves. I felt horrible for Gary who spent most of the time on the top of the truck because he's the shop geek and knows the truck backwards and forwards.

I had brought our tallest masted live truck and I thought while Gary was freezing his ears off, I'd try a desperate live truck shot back to Cleveland from Sandusky. So, as intrepid as I am, I went for it and set up my live truck.

The mast extended fully into the air and I talked to our signal acquisition or sig ack, as we call it, to bring the microwave signal in. I panned, tilted and prayed we could we could get a signal out of Sandusky. Sig ack saw me but we couldn't bring in a strong enough signal that was passable for on air quality.

So, I drop the mast and head to higher ground. By this time, I'm frozen so I set the mast in the up position (yes, I did look up and live), went inside the truck and set the air vents on melt. About three minutes later, I figure the mast should be up so I head outside and look up. The mast is only two sections up and not moving. I hear a psssssssshhhhtttt coming from the mast and I ran my hand over my eyes in frustration. This is air escaping because the seals have constricted because of the cold and the mast has frozen.

I was so fed up at this point, I muttered a few choice four and twelve letter words and climbed up on the top of the truck and grabbed the mast in a bear hug and tried to lift the mast out of it's frozen grip. I couldn't make it budge but I did succeed in covering myself in the grime of northeastern Ohio's finest road salt residue. I couldn't get the mast up to get a signal tuned in. I was left standing there dejected, looking like a human salt lick.

Quick Wrap Up

Snow, snow, snow. It's been piled on us here in Northeastern Ohio. I've got at least 27 inches of snow in my front yard. My neighbor a few doors down used his Bobcat front loader to clear our the driveways on our road. The man is a saint.

Yesterday, I fought 20 m.p.h. winds which were blowing snow so badly that is was a white out my whole entire drive to my live shot about 35 miles away from Cleveland. It was especially fun trying to get a shot tuned in, in such wonderful weather.

Alternating shots outside of the nature center where our shot was located and inside the nature center was an effort in futility. Outside, the camera was functioning well in the cold. But take it inside, it fogged up no matter how much I tried to defog it. I finally would get it to where it looked ok when I'd have to take it outside again. Then back inside..you get the idea.

It was a good day though. Why? Because I had a black bear cub nuzzle up against me and lick my hand.

Today, we were at these toboggan chutes in one of Cleveland's Metroparks. It was great. Of course I'm not counting every single time our signal was interrupted by another station's signal.

Plus, the cold. At 5am it was -3 outside with a windchill of -15. I have heavy duty gloves but I needed to have my right hand free to work the zoom and iris on the camera. I put a thinner glove on and did the shot. It worked out well. I was able to operate the cameras controls. But I would up getting a slight frostbite burn on my right hand. My right thumb still throbs and burns.

Tomorrow, barring any huge spot news story, we'll be live at the Kalahari Waterpark Resort in Sandusky, OH.

Hmm...the low is supposed to be 4 above zero tomorrow night. And I'll be inside where it's climate controlled, nice and toasty.

All in the line of duty I guess. I'll take one for the team.

I Didn't Give You Permission!!

It's happened again. Another photog has been assaulted in the field, this time by an off duty Cleveland police officer. One of our photogs, Channel 3 videographer Craig Roberson was shooting a story with his reporter Lydia Esparra on Cleveland school kids behavior at Tower City when they were invited to shoot video inside a store at the mall. Perfectly ok for the store to do.

Two off duty officers saw the crew inside and confirmed that the crew was indeed invited in and that was deemed ok with the officers. A third officer showed up and uttered the above title of this post. He then proceeded to grab the camera and shove it to the ground, damaging the camera and injuring Craig in the process.

Here is the link to the story with video goodness.

Then afterwards a Tower City PR hack shows up and puts her hand over the camera and tells Craig that what happened to him, didn't really happen to him.

Yeah..ok..whatever.

Craig kept his cool through out the whole situation. I have to say that I'm really impressed with his calm demeanor. There is no word on what Craig or the station will do about seeking charges or an apology from the Cleveland Police Department or Tower City.

Lady(ies) In Red

Being sent to shoot a breakfast meeting is usually boring event. It's usually a few speeches, a half hour of down time while breakfast is being served and eaten(which you're usually never given a plate), then the main speaker. Usually something to be sprayed and forgotten. Until yesterday.

All I have to say is 800 women dressed in red.

Hummunna hummunnna hummunna...

Well Let's See

A couple of days ago I'm sent to a car into a building. I get to the scene and there is a car on it's side and about twenty of Cleveland's fire department members around it. They're busy setting up the jaws of life to extract two victims out of the mangled mess of steel, plastic and aluminum.

From what we were hearing on the police radio, they weren't expecting any survivors of this accident. But, lo and behold inside that heap of scrap metal formerly known as a Toyota, were two people. After about twenty minutes, both of the victims are extracted and off to a Level 1 trauma hospital.

I always am amazed at work of any fire department or paramedic unit when they get to an accident. They work so hard and fast to get those people out and save a life. They're in the job of saving lives and damned if they don't do it almost one hundred percent of the time.

Honest

I haven't let the blog go. Just nothing of note to blog about. We got a whole lot of snow today but writing about snow coverage is about as exciting as actually covering snow.

So, when something happens, I'll put it here. Otherwise, I'm sorry for the lack of posts but then again, I've never been all that interesting of a person anyways.

Busy Week Now

It was quite the busy week overnight. I believe I had a total of three dead in two days. A double homicide was the topper to the week. I also had something odd happen to me.

I rolled up to a homicide scene in Cleveland's 6th Police District. They are the nicest and helpful in all of the city. I get out and stand behind the police car blocking th street even though the police tape is about 40 feet down the road. A officer waves me down to him and says, "Dude isn't here anymore. EMS took him but he's dead. He took three to the chest."

Then the lieutenant comes up and asks who is in the car blocking the road. A young cop answers and the lieutenant gives him an order. Then the lieutenant asks me a question.

In my years of shooting, I've been asked to stop shooting, to leave, to back up, to do some physically impossible things also. But I've never been asked what I was asked by a police office at a crime scene.

When the lieutenant gave the young officer orders, he sent him out to go get some coffee which was just across the street. But what floored me and made me smile was the question the Lt. asked me.

"Would you like some also??" was his question to me. I didn't accept but I thanked him profusely.

I'm still a little stunned. That's never happened to me before.

Four Quiet Days

And I'm going out of my mind. So far I've checked out two car accidents. That's it. Just two small car accidents not worth the waste of stored battery power.

I know, I know. Be careful what I wish for. I'll be ready to walk out of the building and the triple three fire will occur or a plane will fall from the sky on a church full of old ladies making pierogies.

I'll take my chances. Let SOMETHING happen overnight tonight!!!

Quiet Night

As for my previous post, there was nothing going on last night. No major accidents, fatal or otherwise. I did drive by a fender bender or two. Even saw a car that was parked up on a jersey barrier...but no fatal accidents or DUI checkpoints that I was sent to. Just a serene night at the station filled with faux Champagne and leftover Taco Bell for breakfast/lunch.

Here's to a quieter 2007...don't mention the Taco Bell. That doesn't count.