In at 3 and sent by myself to Selma for a story about car port covers and how they're violating some code or something I don't really pay much attention to these things. What sticks with me is that I have to cover the council meeting about it which starts at 7, but between then and 7 I had to find houses that had the covers. I hit the drive-thru, hook up some trance piped in from France, and I'm off. I get to Selma, find a residential part and start circling the neighborhoods. The whole while trying to not look like a predator/prowler and making sure not to double back. By the time I find my first one, my phone starts ringing. I shoot it really quick and I'm off to Del Ray for another story about a man who beat his mom and said she fell. All I'm told is the block that it happened on and I need to try to talk t lock, but it's in the middle of a bunch of farms. There are about 5 houses as far as I can see in each direction, I made it to 3 before I found his house. These are tricky/scary situations, you never know what's going to happen, how people are going to react. I'm not there to badger anyone, if they don't want to talk, that's fine, I'm just there to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. I pull up and because of mud, I have to park a little ways away. As I'm walking to the house I hear this noise, I look up....and Cujo is running full speed. My heart does a couple of beats when I think he's chained up, but freezes again when I see the chain goes from the doghouse to nothing... So the dogs getting closer, and I'm inching back to the car, sweating bullets, about to crap myself. I'm searching for my keys, the dogs setting me in his sights, I get the keys to the door, but it's too late and he's right on top of me. I turn to face him, ready to fight off this beast.... this ferocious beast, I'm face to face with the biggest cutest puppy ever. He's jumping all over me, tail wagging, all excited, starving for attention. I make my way up to the door trying to play with their dog as little as possible. No one answers, so I move across the street and get some shots of the house. The dog sees me and decided to join me, but not before almost getting hit running across the road. The dog really wanted to come with me, the thing was a small horse, so it took some effort to push it back enough to close the door. Then as I tried to drive away, it was almost herding me. I was afraid I was going to hit it, so I floored it to try to get ahead of it. Right when I think I'm in the clear he hangs a right and a swerve to avoid him, now I'm in the on coming lane. I'm finally like fuck it, I scream at the dog and go for it. He finally gave up and just stood in the lane as I drove away. It was the saddest thing, to look back in the rearview mirror and see that. Che , and went back to Selma, found some more houses, went to the meeting and brought it back.
Ok, so I forgot to post this, I ended up back in fresno by about 8pm, edited a package, then made it downtown to the sheriff's department for a live shot at 11. All things considered, not a bad day. Oh, and I stopped in Prather to pee and someone had tagged LOL on the wall. I thought it really said something about how cultures are starting to merge.
Stuck in auberry tonight, one man banding it to a degree. I had to come up alone, get interviews with people in Auberry about the fatal shooting yesterday, pick a couple sound bites, then send it back via FTP (magic). I sent my stuff back, made my deadline, now i'm sitting next to the sherrif's substation waiting for my new orders. I might be stuck here all night, but i'm hoping they realize that when the sherrif says there will be nothing new today, that there is infact nothing new, and let me come back. It could be worse, I brought my lunch, so i've got my snacks, streaming internet radio on my phone piped through the car radio, and the internet at my fingertips. At least i'm not on storm coverage.
A pkg is short for package, a a story about a minute and a half long, usually has about 2-3 interviews and has the reporters voice recorded with video edited to it.
Stuck at the fair gorunds for about 5 hours, trying to make it less. Live at 6, barely knocking a pkg out, reporter yappin on the phone and doing others things that make her day easier, making my day harder. Hungry....can't get food til it's over, if there's time before the live shot at 11.
I forgot to mention today is a half day for me. I've got an ear infection or something and it's driving me insane. I tried to make an appointment, but the earliest I could get in was Friday. It just keeps getting worse, so after my live shot for the 6 I had to split. I just made it into the room, waiting for the doctor to see me. While I was in the waiting room a kid came in with a cut to his head from a skateboard. He was really nervous about getting stitches, so I told him about mine and showed him my little bald spot from the scar. He was scared the shot was going to hurt, so I told him that it hurt already, so you don't even feel it, in fact, right after the shot you don't feel much at all. He seemed to relax a bit we joked about being covered in blood and how weird when the blood dripped down your head. At least h than me.
Security is getting tighter on trains....kinda feels like it's a little late. Like maybe this should have been something they looked into after the bombings in London. I don't know, but it's got me doing a pkg and a live shot from the train station.
My first blog, a tale of productivity brought on by insomnia.
My sleep cycle has become more erratic in the past few weeks. Started with me waking up a couple hours earlier, to it becoming increasingly difficult to wind down. The worst was when it was 8am and I still wasn't tired. It's almost 4am and I'm just starting to feel tired, things are looking good tonight. There are a lot of things such as finishing unpacking, cleaning and such that I could be doing, but lately I've been doing a lot of reading online, playing halo3, and watching movies.
The more I type, the less interested in writing about that I become, so I'm switching to the story behind the picture.
I started my day at work last Tuesday by rushing out the door and heading to Pixley, CA. We just received a press release about a soldier they were sending us to his house without contacting the family first to even see if they wanted to speak with us. Well they gave us a map, but the printer sucks so the map is hard to read and the directions look like it's missing a page, so we plugged the address into my GPS and we hit the road. My reporter and I were sent down to the Tulare Ag show the day before, so we were making almost the same trek down south again. After about 55 miles we hit our exit and kept going for about another 10. The farther we drive, the more ag, and less houses there are. My GPS finally shouts "You've reached your destination." We stop, look around and start laughing. This is where the pictures come in, there was absolutely nothing out there, but dirt roads and ag land. That's when the portion of the map the we thought was wrong, actually made sense. "portions unpaved" my reporter tells me...more laughter. We call and tell them to cancel the 5 o'clock live shot and no started driving around the area hoping to stumble onto something. We end up finding the house a few minutes later...and so did all the other news agencies, 4 different crews all show up at the same time. After some delicate schmoozing we're told to fuck off and back to Fresno it is...but not before doing a couple live hits in front of the house. ....so with no sound or video we're switched to a wrap up of the freeway pileup that happened earlier in the day.
121 miles Monday 190 miles Tuesday 311 miles in 2 days, and I never left the valley.
