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Yesterday we planned to be in the D.C. bureau… if you watched, you know that it did not turn out that way. Tragedy hit New York City, so we hit the road. I was in my office in Washington when I got the e-mail: "Can you come to NY?" I only had time for, "Yes." I gathered my things (I had very little to gather since I was not leaving from home) while I had my assistant run across the street to Union Station to use my credit card on the automatic ticket machine for the next train to NYC. Fortunately, the train station is across the street from our D.C. bureau and fortunately the trains to NYC run almost hourly.
En route to NYC, I was studying for the show: Learning about Cory Lidle, studying the information being "BlackBerried" to me about the plane, about the weather, about the New York Yankees, what the mayor was saying, what NORAD was doing, etc.
I made it to New York City before 7 p.m. It was by then pouring down rain. I went to the scene that you had seen on your TV screens all day. As you might imagine, seeing it up close is different from seeing it on television. It also gave me a better idea of what happened, but of course we won't know for sure what happened until the NTSB conducts and finishes its investigation. I also had a chance to talk to people on the street to learn what they saw. That also helps me better understand so that I can better do my job.
The "pay" for the opportunity to get a bit closer and to get a bit better idea of what happened so that I could do my job a little better, was that we had to do the show in pouring rain. FOX had put up a tent over the top of our live shot, but it was raining so hard by the time our show started, that the seams of the tent were leaking on my head and that of my colleague, Jamie Colby. The crew then concocted a solution, which fortunately the TV camera did not catch. I DID catch it on my still camera and will post the pics tomorrow. The crew taped and clamped an umbrella over my head inside the leaking tent. In short: never dull, but none of us complained. In this business you see so much tragedy and unhappiness that you have no doubt that you are lucky just to have to deal with some rain falling down on you.
I have to rush to catch the train back to Washington, so the blog is a bit short — no e-mails today, but I promise e-mails and pics tomorrow.
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