Guard Cable

I read a story on LakeSun website, which said that there was only one death in the median of I – 70 in 2008 because of the newly built guard rails, while in 2006 there were 24 deaths. No face-to-face conflict is contained in the story, but in my opinion, anything about death is always a big story, at least to some individuals who might be you or me.

So I pitched the story idea to Randy. “Talk with drivers, talk with MODOT, get some video of the rails, then you are good!” said Randy.

I made a triangle trip that afternoon from Columbia to Jefferson City (MODOT) and then to Kingdom City (Petro Truck Stop). The first thing I concluded from that experience is “be proactive”. I made a phone call to MODOT, and then I was kicked from person A to person B to person C just like a soccer ball. When the last gentleman called me and was about to introduce me to another officer available to do an interview, I stopped him and asked, “Can I talk with you real quick?” “I am going to leave in half an hour at 3pm.” “I can arrive there in 20 minutes and finish the interview before 3pm. So can I come?” “If you can make it, then sure!”

Thanks to what I had done when I was waiting for the phone calls. I checked out all the gears and wrote down all the information on the blackboard. So when I put down the cell phone, I was good to go. I speeded a little bit and made it to what I had promised.

Doing stand-up for the story has a lot of fun too. Since it was about median guard cables, I wanted to do a stand-up right next to the cable. I had worries because I was not sure whether that was doable or even violating some highway rules. In order to do a better job, I stopped my car on the shoulder of the busy I-70 with the emergency flashers on, walked across the traffic lanes and went down to the median. You will never understand physically how fast the cars were on the highway if you were driving in a car. I stood in the median, feeling like I was going to be blown away by the passing-bys. I adjusted the camera and flipped the screen to record my stand-up. The noise of the cars was so loud that I hardly could hear myself! I bet all the drivers passing by must be confused about what the hell the girl was doing over there! I was not sure whether it was worthy or not until the tiger chair commented “Good stand-up!” when she did the video approval.

While I was doing my pkg and trying to make some progress, I heard the good news from Stacy that Scott and Sarah won some awards again. I checked out the winning story of “Mr. Treelighter” and was impressed by the crafted way they merged sound bites and the narration. And the memorable shots prove again how excellent and talented Scott is as a photographer.