In Tucson on Assignment

Back in the day, I used to travel a lot for work, all over the world, but these days with budget cuts, we don't get on the road as much, instead, letting affiliates pick up the shoots.

I like traveling for work. Sort of. It was a lot easier pre-911 considering how much gear we travel with, but I've gotten pretty darned good at juggling it all while navigating airports. Generally, I travel alone with the gear since I like flying out of a smaller regional airport near my home rather than braving LAX. The challenge is trying to move the five-to-ten cases of gear (depending on the assignment) without letting it out of my sight. Sky-caps are great, especially my guys at John Wayne Airport. They make it so much easier.

I'm in Tuscon on assignment for the next couple of days to cover John McCain and Sarah Palin, together again to try and draw the conservative base back to McCain.

Travel was a breeze today. Everything went according to plan. I got the gear on flight ($400 in excess baggage!), got it off the flight, into a rental car, and to the hotel. Now comes the tough part. The day started when I headed to the airport about ten a.m. and arrived in Tucson about four. We go live tonight at eleven, have to come back to the hotel, sleep for about four hours, and get up to do two hits for our morning show (six and six thirty a.m.). And that's all before we've even covered the event!

Around noon, we shoot the campaign event, write and edit our stories for five and six, do the live shots for five and six. Whew. Done?


Maybe. There's a chance we'll have to go again for the 11p.m. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't. So yeah... travel assignments are exhausting. We work our butts off. But it's a nice change of pace.

And look! My pillow wishes me goodnight! Sadly, I won't see the pillow again until after midnight.

Until tomorrow...

Later gators