I cant really explain why I like chasing hurricanes, as it is a thoroughly miserable endeavour. But whenever one of these churning monsters takes aim at the Carolina coast, I jones to be there when it slams ashore. Perhaps I wouldn’t feel this way if I fixed copiers for a living, but after fifteen years of habitual storm coverage, I’ve developed quite the nasty hurricane habit. Like a junkie who knows he ain‘t living right, I could barely look at myself in the rearview mirror of my news unit Tuesday as I made one more mad dash into dirty weather. Bright sun in the Triad disappeared by Raleigh. By the time I reached the edge of Wilmington, a long line of evacuating traffic choked the oncoming lanes while angry raindrops turned my windshield into an abstract painting. It was then I realized just what I’d volunteered for again and I spent the last few miles to Carolina Beach squirming in my seat with adrenaline and regret.I blew into town around the same time Ophelia’s outermost rain-bands did. Snaking through the flashing yellow traffic signals, I scanned the storefronts for makeshift plywood and spray painted defiance. I found only the former, a sunglass shop with all her windows sheathed in expertly erected wooden planks. Swooping into a parking spot off the main drag, I threw the Explorer in PAR K, leaned on the door handle and tumbled into the drink.
Outside, shimmering curtains of rain showers undulated across the deserted intersection. I kept my head down, but still took on quite a bit of water in the two seconds it too me to pop the tailgate. Crawling into the overstuffed cargo stash, I grumbled under my breath and fumbled with Velcro straps. Only when my Sony was encased in tailored blue canvas did I venture back out, knowing all the electronic bravado I brought would all be for naught if water got inside my camera. As I poked my head out of the back of the truck, two shirtless surfers pedaled by in slow-motion, their tattooed necks twisting shaven heads toward the emerging newsman.“Hey guys,” I shouted over the roar of the storm, “Ya got a minute?”
Bill and Ted were friendly enough types but had trouble putting more than three words together at a time. As they roped to express how stroked they were to ride out the storm, I searched for a way to blow them off quickly. Chewing my lip, I stared at the quickly dimming daylight behind Bill’s (or Ted’s) head. On my hip, an ancient cell phone rang.
“You got time to call this yacht guy?”, Wes asked from the cockpit of his own news cruiser. “We‘re about a half hour out.”
“Sure” I said, not knowing who the‘ yacht guy’ was. Six minutes later I stepped aboard the vessel in question; it sunk a bit under my weight, making it more of a boat than a yacht. Inching along the narrow walkway outside the cabin, I held my camera in a death grip and thought about a storm named Gordon. I was halfway around the starboard side when a older man in a lighthouse t-shirt and white beard slid open a door panel and beckoned me inside. Once belowdecks, I pinned a microphone on my host, a retired state trooper who’d spent the last ten years cruising the Caribbean. In a corner of his potted plant-filled cabin, his gray haired girlfriend giggled at his every on-screen retort. Less than ten minutes after boarding the boat, I gathered my tools and disembarked. I couldn’t help but giggle nervously as I gripped the railing of the bobbing boat. Nary a slip around the small harbor was empty, paint-peeled fishing vessels and gleaming pleasure crafts pitched and yawed along side each other, the sounds of rope rubbing on wood echoing underneath the slapping patter of the hard-falling rain.‘The places I find myself’ I thought as I stepped off the boat and onto a floating pier of lashed-together boards. In the distance, I saw Unit Four parked by the condo entrance, its hazard lights still flashing in the downpour. Holding my head down to avoid a face full of rain water, I ran around across the Yacht Club’s yard with my camera lens pointed behind me. I was almost to the other side when I heard them.
“Woo-Hoo! TV Dude! Wanna Beer? C’mon on man, make us famous”
I looked up and squinted through the deluge. Three stories up a small group of young locals loitered and grinned outside the condo’s covered porch. Cigarette smoke hung over their heads, mingling with the smell of a nearby grill’s sizzling contents. Low voices and raucous laughter rang out from behind the screen, punctuating the sound of the wind howling through the breezeway. Climbing the condo‘s steps, I smiled and waved, grateful to have found a bonafide hurricane party to put on the ten o clock news. When I stepped onto their landing, the inebriated foursome clapped and cheered, welcoming me to their gathering like a guest of honor. As they all began talking at once, I pinned a lapel microphone on the soberest one’s shirt and peppered him with questions. Through fumes borne of an Old Milwaukee can, he spoke of how the boats berthed below would float up over their slips should the water level rise enough. I made a mental note to check back later on the area as drops of rainwater slid off my eyebrows and straight into my upturned viewfinder, distorting the drunk man‘s image. I was wiping off the water with a rain-soaked sleeve when my cell phone rang for the fifteenth time that day.“Stewie, we’re at the Marriott. Chad needs your disc so he can log it. Didya get anything?” I could hear tinny audio playing at fast speed in the background, along with a considerable amount of trash talk.
“Yeah...good stuff too”, I said, fumbling through my run-bag for the feel of my small digital camera. Across the screened-in porch, the guy I‘d been interviewing convulsed with tipsy giggles as his friends fought to high-five him. I ran my fingers under the soaking wet station ball-cap and pressed the old phone to my ear. “Lemme say goodbye to my new best friends and I’ll be right there -”(To Be Continued...)
With my own sudden jaunt to the coast this week, I’ve neglected updating you on the ‘
Meet Chad Tucker. Sometimes known as the King of 
It may look like a pimped-out moving van, but this vintage satellite truck is just as much a character in our story as any of her smelly occupants. Lovingly referred to as the ’
But first let me introduce you to one Wesley Barrett. Originally from Roanoke Rapids, N.C., Wesley is everything I’m not: highly-organized, laser-focused, nattily-attired. Hell, the guy dresses like a pro golfer, for cryin’ out loud! That’s no slam, as I’m almost certain it beats the loser-photog cabana loungewear I so favor. When not out bedecking his fellow lensmen, you’ll find him feeding his lifelong obsession with the 
Speaking of coffee, you’ll find none of my beloved blog-juice inside the old Sat Truck. What you WILL discover are hidden caches of snack foods, coolers of bottled water and an illicit supply of assorted tobacco products. Somewhere among all this contraband you’re sure to stumble across one intently-distracted Truck Op, in this case the battle-proven yet baby-faced Joe McCloskey. A solid shooter himself, lately Joe-Joe has taken it upon himself to learn the Ways of the Satellite - a mysterious discipline rewarded only with a steady succession of sudden road-trips and some seriously righteous overtime. That the young newlywed would embrace this monumental task in the first place brings me great joy - for there’s nothing more valued than a cool cat who can tune in 
Last but not least, it is my pleasure to present you with a local legend among sat truck clusters. I give you Danny Spillane. At first glance you may think the guy washing the Santa Maria’s windshield is a mere truck driver. Not true. Highly experienced yet under-appreciated, this veteran of a thousand media circuses cut his teeth shooting every kind of news there is before joining the Sat Side many moons ago. Since then he’s logged a staggering amount of miles in a variety of dish-bearing vehicles. Think of a major news story in North Carolina and the surrounding states over the past ten years or so, and chances are Danny was not only there, but he probably held the day together with his calm yet volatile leadership style. He’s saved my bacon a number of times, from fixing my attempts at fancy lighting to loaning me pair of dry socks once a storm named 
Ophelia is still just a tropical storm spinning off the Carolinas' coast, but the suits here at the shop feel it warrants up-close coverage anyway. Ater a hard-target search of their top-shelf talent, they've come up empty and decided to send me. Thus, I'm hurtling toward the shore even as you read this, with plans to blog about it along the way, (provided I get a wee bit of down-time and a little wi-fi). Stay Tuned...
His name is Wesley Hopkins, but I’ll always think of him as the Marlboro Man. Not because he smoked (he didn’t), but because of the careworn creases in his cheek, the no-nonsense cowboy hat and gravely, matter-of-fact demeanor. It took me the better part of an hour to reach the sprawling acres of Southwest Randolph County he called home, but within seconds of shaking Mr. Hopkins leathery hand, I knew it was worth the trip. Before I could even crawl out of my news unit, the veteran rancher began pointing out facets of his compound previously unnoticed. The split rail fence in the distance, the thatch of junipers over there, the stone inlay of a winding walking path - all carefully constructed by the 65 year old grandfather using his grade school education and his complete mastery of the rolling, wooded land. As the old chap showed me a small but beautiful chapel he built from the parts of a storm-damaged church, I smiled and nodded - thinking how it took me all weekend to organize my garage.
But I hadn’t traveled so out of my way to compare job-jars; I was there on business. Mr. Hopkins knew it too and agreed to ride with me to the pasture where the dreadful thing happened. A half mile from his modest house, this land-rich patriarch pointed me to a narrow, rutted path. He made grandfatherly small talk as I steered the Ford Explorer around the deep impressions in the gravel. Right around the middle of nowhere, Mr. Hopkins motioned for me to stop, hopped out rather spry-like for a man of his vintage, and unfastened a drooping metal rope from a post the size of a flag pole. Before I could tell him my citified SUV was only two -wheel drive, the grizzled landsman pointed to a ridge across a grassy field. Glancing down at the fuel gage needle as slipped below the bright shining ‘E”, I picked a path through the tire-high grass of the sloping terrain and hoped I had enough juice to get back to the nearest gas station - wherever the hell that might be.
From the top of the grassy ridge I could make out the silhouettes of a couple dozen black cows against the meadow. They took in my presence with their usual languor, but the sight of the man in the cowboy hat caused their heads to bob and their moos to thicken. As the herd began sauntering over in hopes of something to eat, Hopkins pointed to a spot of land near an electric fence. 
While I framed up shots and hit the ‘Record’ button, Hopkins pointed out more features of the land. Every stump, rock and patch of trees had a back story - a hard-earned tale of sweat, labor and innovation. Where as I looked around and saw an inert meadow, Hopkins saw the breathing living components of a lifetime of labor. That impressed me and I told him so. He laughed as I remarked how all his efforts put a younger man like me to shame. Then he really looked at me for the first time, taking in my battered tripod, tropical shirt, my logo’d news unit idling in the background. 
Between the half dozen reporter-voiced ’packages’ in your average newscast is a plethora of what we in the biz know as Vo-Sots. Allow me to elaborate. VO stands for Video, in this case 40 seconds or so of highly edited footage designed to run ‘under’ an anchor’s off-camera voice. This is followed by a Sot, or Sound On Tape, better known as a sound-bite. You know, those talking heads you see being interviewed on the evening news; the parade of grimacing faces that appear on the magic box in the corner of your living room right around dinnertime. TV News, it‘s called. Perhaps you’ve heard about it. 
If not, congratulate yourself. Otherwise, stop pretending like you don’t know what a VoSot is, because it’s definitely gonna be on the test. Not just the structural breakdown of said line-up item, but the actual procurement of said species, for this is where the real learning begins. I have discovered more cosmic truths about the planet on the seemingly endless itinerary of this pointless pursuit than from any college syllabus. Then again, I never got very far past the syllabus, choosing instead to frequent the parking lot the for the very finest in whatever illicit bent was currently in season. It wasn’t long before I traded a half-hearted stab at academia form a job selling cars, a career I was so miserable at that I quickly abandoned it for the quixotic occupation of TV news-gatherer. That, my friend, is desperate.
Still, I took to the oddball crew of electronic town-criers like the aimless drifter I was. After I proved my mastery of the mid-seventies technology rusting in the studio, I shuffled through a few other in-house gigs, but always with my eye on the open road. Production vans were my first modes of transportation, but they only took to me to the used car lots and rich lady dress shops of the cheesy local commercial circuit. What I really yearned to pilot was a flashy news unit, lacquered to the gills with updated logos and bristling with the crackle of multiple scanner traffic. I’d watch the painted Blazers, low-rider station-wagons and newfangled SUV’s rumble out of the lot ever morning as I polished light bulbs in the back of my faded white Ford Aerostar. Oh to be a cowboy, I thought - dodging deadlines and tracking down news on the open road.
It all seemed very romantic back then, but from where I now sit - in the well-worn ass-groove of my umpteenth news unit, it feels quite pedestrian. Especially when I spend my days on VoSot Patrol - that time-honored tradition of assigning a lone photog several small news stories to gather throughout the day. Ribbon-Cuttings, Mug Shots, Dog-Shows and Drive-by’s - the flotsam and jetsam of daily drivel that warrants mention but not analysis (according to the twenty-something news producer that is, very often a nebbish type who’s been out of Momma’s kitchen three times now, thank you very much). No, after doubling back from town to town, I’ve begun chasing the trivial and the traumatic at about the same speed. Sure, I‘ll still goose the engine for breaking news, but don’t expect me to risk life and limb for the County Commissioner meeting. They’ll still be acting like third graders when I get there, don’t you worry.
So while I stare at the dust motes skittering across my office‘s dashboard, excuse me if I don’t crane my neck too hard at that fire truck that just sped through the intersection. Until I see a giant ape, burning orphanage or flying police car come across my windshield, I’m not about to get off schedule. After all, I got a group of school kids, a hopped-up principal and a cage full of ghetto-birds waiting on yours truly. It’s gonna take more than a toxic smoke plume twisting up from the horizon to keep me from my appointed rounds! Somewhere, back in the newsroom, there’s a metrosexual cracking open his third Diet Coke of the day and watching Judge Judy, who’s counting on me to fill 120 unrelated seconds of his show. One tap of my cell phone’s speed-dial feature and warm soda shoots out his nose and all over today‘s plaintiff. Don't make me do it!
