Not This Time

Post Office branch at Eastchester, High Point

The late comedian, George Carlin, noted on human behavior: the closer a person is to you, the nicer they are. The bubble-headed bleach blonde anchor on TV is an IDIOT!! That guy in the car who just cut you off is an asshole! The person standing next to you in line is a dick.
Well, not this time. We've all been here: you are waiting for someone to vacate a parking spot (in this case, the only available parking spot), your turn signal is on for a weak insurance policy, hoping people who come by looking for the spot you have your eyes on will see that you have been waiting for it before they showed up, and would move along. Not this time. While the person is backing out of the premium, a lady, who looked to be in her fifties came up from the other direction, and put her turn signal on. "HA!" I thought. "You obviously don't see me siting here communicating my next move. Or, you are in a provocative mood. Or both. " When the departing car gave enough room for me to take charge, I did. It was not because I felt mean or selfish, it was because of principal. I was there BEFORE her. And besides, I didn't budget the time for having to troll this little parking lot. Who would?
When I got out of my Ford Windstar, I looked over to see what she ended up doing. You can see what she did with her car. She not only blocked me in, but the two cars to the right. I waited for her to walk over. When she did, I told her what a selfish thing she had just done. She said she was there first. I corrected her and she walked away like, "what are you going to do about it?" Right. What am I going to do about it. I wanted to reach in to her partly opened window and liberate her poodle who commiserated with me about her self-centered owner. I instead snapped a couple of pictures of what some people are capable of doing. Now I didn't care if I was a little late for work. It was worth it to me to see how all this was going to play out. I didn't want to run my errand because I didn't know what else she was willing to do to make herself feel better about what had just happened. I was also sporting a couple of Fox8 logos, so I was confined to civil behavior. For if I was not representing, she would have heard from me, George.

Dirty Laundry

This was my view for what seemed like most of the day. Another day trolling for a story. I've been complaining a bit (yesterday) about how difficult it is to come up with a decent story people might be interested in. Here's another day. For news stories, the last week of December has to be the driest week of the year. It seems most people are away from work either ordering a cold, fruity drink from Diego, the Caribbean bartender, or a hot, Irish drink from Lance, the bartender in the ski chalet. You either have to make something up, or you end up covering somebody's misfortune.So now, instead of doing a story on politicians mock-slicing a colorful ribbon to show off their political negotiating prowess, or doing a story on politicians bickering in the council chambers, or a story on--you get the picture. I don't want to be held responsible for your blindness after you stab out your mind's eye from these horrible descriptions.
So, while the news tree is mostly covered in snow these days, Chad Tucker and I actually had a decent story to flesh out. A guy who got hit by a car a month ago and his mother were willing to talk to us about his ordeal. Problem was, at some point that day, his health went bad to some degree, and he had to be taken back to the hospital by ambulance. We found out this fact at 5pm. At the time we were in Stanleyville, an annexed neighborhood of Winston-Salem. We were then put on another story about someone who was involved in a single car crash and died. This person also happened to be pregnant. (Jeeze, I know!) This had just happened, but it was about an hour south by High Rock Lake. So we blazed another trail.

When we got to the scene--a very dark, two-lane rural road--all we could see was vehicle stains and cat litter on the road. Clearly, this was a desperate attempt to get some more dirty laundry. A single vehicle fatal crash on a two lane rural road does not take long to clean up, and we were an hour away.
Now, we head 45 minutes northeast to get something on a guy who was hit by a car while carrying groceries on I-40. (I know, right? And when it rains, it pours. I also could hear the line in that Don Henley song "get the widow on the set, we need dirty laundry.")
We ended up just getting some video to show how bad the accident had affected traffic, then moved over to Kernersville to do a "quick package" on gas prices. The angle here is that a former oil company executive was quoted as saying something like "everyone should get ready to pay $5 a gallon by the end of next year. Apparently this little factoid is making some drivers so angry, they are weaving off the road striking people and trees. I'm kidding!

So at 9:00 we find a place to go live, Chad starts logging, and I pull cable and set up the shot. Yeah, this shot here, AND the live shot. I start editing at 9:30, feed at 9:50, and ten minutes later do that TV thing we do.
"I make my living on the evening news. Just give me something, something I can use..."

As the reporter said, "Weather stories suck when there's no weather." Now, despite the photo (by Mike Taylor) showing plenty of weather, she made that comment a couple of hours into the search for the story. It was the first weekday after the biggest snowfall the area has seen, and the housecats thought Katie Nordeen and I could turn another two-story, two live shots for the day. It would have been the third time within two weeks. Two angles on a day of bad weather. This time they wanted one on road conditions and how the city of Greensboro was handling them, and the second one was to be on what does a homeowner do when their 80 foot trees are supporting the heft of wet snow. But it was not to be today. Why? The interstates, state roads, and primary roads in the county were dry from some outstanding work by the NCDOT and the city of Greensboro, and all that was left was some residential streets. But for the most part, they were very driveable. And the tree story? After driving around several Greensboro neighborhoods, the best we could find were a few branches that had snapped and fallen into yards, damaging nothing. It looked a lot like the photo above. We could barely find any people outside.  Fortunately we have a smart guy at the helm in Kevin Daniels, fresh off a vacation in the Carribbean. We told him how the original story ideas were melting away, and he made the right call. The decision? Cut the tree story, change the road story into a VOSOT, and the reporter package is now about the people at the Piedmont Triad International airport who have been inconvenienced by the snow.

The best part of that is that the story was already shot by colleague, Stewart Pittman, who also was just off a Christmas break, but not as fresh off his vacation as Kevin Daniels. Stewart was called in to do on-camera live shots for the morning show on three hours of sleep. Poor guy. I can only imagine the dizzying stupor he must have been in gathering that stuff. Nevertheless, we got the producers what they needed, and we felt better for not having to slam so much together, and surely Stewart felt better going home well before he expected.

A Taste of Home

I grew up in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and 21 times I rode the earth around the sun from up there. And while tilted away from our star, the climate was mean. Temperatures that would make you shatter like a poorly hung glass Christmas ornament if you got struck by the door getting on the transit bus. When you are annually surrounded by that kind of atmosphere, you not only get used to it, but you can actually enjoy it. At least the snow anyway. It is a way of life after all. Most Winter games and other activities were created in the North Star State. After living in the South the last 16 years, I have been spoiled when it comes to Winters. In my former life, sub-zero temperatures were expected, and, while cursed at, they were dealt with.

Here, we don't get that. The coldest it seems to get is in the single digits--with the harshest winds slapping you in the face. What we also don't get down here is a decent snowfall. Even the heartiest Minnesotan would call a four-inch snowfall decent. And while most Minnesotans know how to navigate through their version of Winter, many North Carolinians do not. You could say "can you blame them? Most have little to no experience driving on snow and ice-slicked roads." That may be the case, but I think a lot of drivers either don't have common sense, or don't use it when it comes to navigating a ton and a half of steel over a slick roadway. Most of what I've seen has occurred on the state highways and interstates. I can't say how people behave on the narrower roads with lower speed limits, as I haven't really been on those roads. But, while driving the roads that have speed limits of 55 and above, I've seen many drivers traveling over the posted speed limit--some as much as ten mph over! These people have no imagination. Other things I've seen that grind my gears is people who drive in this kind of weather when it is approaching dusk and they don't have any lights on, nor do they use any turn signals when changing lanes, and they tailgate. People like that will drive that way until they are involved in a crash, and maybe then they will change their behaviors to more safer ones.
Good thing North Carolina doesn't see Minnesota weather very often. Or is it?