Welcome to My World...

So, as I've engaged in my often early morning, 45-minute commute, I've taken to using my iPod on shuffle for entertainment ... mainly because there's so little worth listening on the radio at 5 am. Also, it is an interesting exercise both in self-revelation (sometimes I'm surprised what songs pop up -- I don't know I even had them) and self-congratulation (aren't I clever in having such a range of music in there). Oddly, no matter how disparate, or perhaps diverse, the music, it often blends so well. It's occurred to me (in one of those moments of self-congratulation) that it would make for an easily done, amusing radio show. Just walk in, plug in the iPod on shuffle, open on the mike with a story -- something amusing, maybe vaguely Garrison Kielor-like -- about some absurdity that had happened to me, end with the phrase, "Welcome to my world," and hit "play."

So here's an amusing story from my world these days.

I have become the Festival King. As the Fall brings festivals -- Olde (Yes, the "e" is required) Salem, Pulaskifest (all one word, trust me), the Coal Miners Memorial Family Fun Day, Highlander Festival (open-minded enough to be pan-Celtic, including the Irish), the Medieval Faire (another required "e"), etc., etc. These are on Saturday and Sunday, and as I am now on permanent weekend shift, filming them is my pleasure...

Last Sunday the grind (which also includes such as a rose show and art displays) involved a bike race ... a bike race up a mountain ... 7 1/2 miles of one-lane, switchback gravel road up a local mountain (as I learned). We learned of this by way of a news release, as we learn of most all of these things, that was two pages long ... and at no point saw fit to mention where this race was to occur.

Roanoke County can be a big place in that sort of situation. They did say where the awards ceremony was going to be, at 2 pm ... coincidentally the hour at which my shift was set to end. The race was set to begin at 9 am, 10 am, or 11 am, depending on whether you read the news release, the web site or the schedule I found (more on that in a moment). So I drove to the awards location, a place called Camp Roanoke, a short way out of town down winding country roads. It's no treat to find either, especially if you've never been there before, but I started down that one-lane gravel road to the camp after a careful map study, only to be confronted by a police car coming the other way.

The lights came on, the car slowed. I opened my window and the cop looks up and says, truly, "Oh, I didn't know you were News 7." Okay, so another reason why I like driving around with the station logo printed a foot tall on the side of the car. "I just want to let you know the bicyclists are coming." I thanked him and drove on, thinking: "What?!" Sure enough, about 20 yards on, about fifty bicyclists blow by with the whoosh of wheels and chatter of chains.

I stop. Now, I'm figuratively, if not literally, at a crossroads. (The road remained an entrapping narrow trail to ... well, at this point I don't know.) Other vehicles follow the bicyclists, Do I try to U-turn as best I can and follow, in hopes of getting ... well, anything? Do I continue away, finding someone at the camp who might actually know what's going on and where to go? Do I try to pass the pack, get ahead, and grab a shot before it gets away? Aw, ****. I continue on. At least someone might know what's going on, and if I miss it ... well, then, I've already missed it, haven't I?

So I come roaring into the camp (I literally fishtailed around the corner into the gate, throwing gravel and dust like a scene from "Dukes of Hazard") and pull into the parking lot, which is full of cars but empty of people. Actually, the whole place is empty. Where the drive turns into the parking lot, on the ground, I see a ball cap and a clipboard. It's like the Marie Celeste, as if everyone had simply disappeared in mid-activity, dematerializing but for the cap and the clipboard, which simply dropped into the grass.

Now I have no shame. I leap out of the car, walk over to the clipboard and read the schedule, which says the race begins at 11 (it's 10:40 at this point) at "Poor Mountain Road." Where the hell is that? Who cares, if I go the direction of the bicyclists, I'll undoubtedly pass them -- or at least get there in time -- and catch the start. I'll fake it from there. I drop the clipboard, utterly without ceremony -- plop -- in the grass, and jump in the car.

Back down the approach road, and at the end I'm left with a quandary. The bicyclists are now long out of sight. Uh, which way do I turn for this road? The mountains are closer on the left; a glance at the map shows a long run over a river to the right. But I came from the left, and saw nothing that implied a race start. I turn left, but after fifty years or so have second thoughts and pull over to study the map. Yep, the index shows I should have turned right.

Another U-turn, over the river and literally through the woods and around a broad, arcing curve, and there they are, all drawn up in a pack at a railroad crossing. I slide to a halt, leap out and grab the camera in time to film the start -- a nice shot, zooming out and panning with them as they go by -- and then I'm alone in an empty road with a couple of race organizers.

"So," I say, walking up, "how do I, uh, leapfrog ahead of these guys and get some more shots?" "You can't." I smile reflexively while staring blankly at these guys. "It's a pretty narrow road, and they're going to be all over it." At this moment, I'm remembering all sorts of warnings on that schedule on the clipboard about how how this road and that "will be open to traffic," and how the bikers should be cautious. "Uh," I say. "Well, I'd like to get more than one shot of this." I hope he gets my implication that his nifty race will not be on TV unless this can happen. I don't think he did. "I wish you could too," he says. But he doesn't know how. I take off after the bikers anyhow.

First I encounter the pickup trucks trailing, their flashers on. To my pleasure and surprise, first one then the second lets me pass. Then the motorcyclist ahead of them lets me by. Now we're on this narrow, dirt, switchback road with what seems a 40 degree incline. I'm behind the last bicyclist. He crawls agonizingly upwards, his bike obviously in the lowest gear, his legs painfully pumping away. My thighs begin to experience that lactic acid ache in sympathy.

The "road" is about as wide as my car. I creep along, trying to leave a good distance between me and the rider so as not to pressure him. A wide spot comes, and he waves my past. And so with the next and the next. Then, at a wider spot, there's a water station. I pull over, and leaving the car running pull out the camera and film those last four or so riders I passed riding by. Then I jump in before the motorcycle arrives and skid out again ... back behind the last guy in the race.

The scene repeats itself again -- me rolling slowly behind, then passing the bottom three or so, then pulling off to film them passing. Then in the back again, slowly passing one then another, until finally the top and the finish line, where I was able to film three or four coming in and interview the winners. It took over an hour to get there.

Then on to another festival (the Diabetes Walk for a Cure), drop the footage at the station and go home. The best thing about these days is that I just dump and run; by the time my pictures were downloaded into the station computer, my shift had ended an hour earlier. It's someone else's problem to edit it into something useful.

Today I come in and see what they made of it. They used that opening shot of the start ... and the interviews at the end. Turns out I didn't need more than one shot. Welcome to my world...