Sam Sinke's Blog

Sunday, May 2, 2004
12:04 a.m.
    As I continue to live fast and furious, and bounce from city to city like a well-worn ping pong ball, I got to thinking about my first couple years of running a satellite truck.
    I was working for another company at the time. The position didn't pay very well, but it was a great experience.
    While I had a lot of weird things happen, and found myself in a lot of backwoods places throughout Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, the Carolinas and Louisiana... hearing what could be described as fast and furious banjo and guitar music half the time... I would have to say that some of my favorite memories include being on the road with my friends Derrick Sheller and John Innes.
    Now, since most of these memories could get us all in trouble, I'll have to keep the online entries here as an abridged version.
    One particular pack of weeks included chasing a few hurricanes down and up the coast of Florida. We both jumped in the truck, Conus One (the world's first SNG vehicle) and took off from Tallahassee, Florida to head off the hurricane down in the Florida keys.
    Keep in mind the first part of this drive is about 13 hours by truck. With Conus One, since the transmission overheated at speeds over 63.4 miles per hour, this trip stretched to about 15 or 16 hours.
    The truck resembled a garbage truck, where somebody has gingerly placed a 2.4 meter satellite truck into the back, with the feed horn facing out.
    It had two gasoline tanks, rated at a little over 15 gallons each. While driving, you could switch between tanks. If you were running the 15 kw generator, you had to refill the one tank it drew off of before it went dry in less than 12 hours.
    The truck's mileage was so poor, you had to refill the tanks about every 4 to 4-1/2 hours. This would have made for an interesting case of how to fill out a driver's log book, but every Florida resident or driver knows that during a hurricane the log books go out the window. The weigh stations close. The toll booths close. Unfortunately, so do a lot of the businesses, but those that are most important usually stay open.
    Derrick and I got within two or three hours of Miami and the gateway to the Keys when we got turned around. We were now heading to either Fort Meyers or Naples. And by the time we got close to Naples, they decided to send us to Marco Island.
    I was driving when we drove up and paid the toll at the bridge onto Marco Island. Apparently toll booth Willie was the last toll booth operator left at his post in the state of Florida.
    I set my wallet down in the center console, when all of a sudden a big sea breeze blew through our open windows, taking with it a few hundred dollars worth of receipts out the window.
    I slammed on the brakes, looked over at the stunned look on Derrick's face, locked the emergency brake and jumped out onto the pavement running toward the receipts, which were all over the half football field of grass leading down to the causeway.
    I heard Derrick laughing hysterically, and yelling at me, "You're never gonna find all of them, dude!"
    I threw back a lot of curse words, and believe I managed to pick up all of the receipts. And 15-20 minutes later, we were back on the road again.
    We pulled up to the beach where a local satellite truck was already parked. It was pretty much the only public parking spot where you could drive the truck right out onto the beach, so it became our newest home away from home for the next few days.
    Marco Island was beautiful, and just about the closest thing to a vacation we could have managed to pull off. Hurricane Georges not only "skirted" our island by more than 75 miles, it didn't even stir up the water. It was as smooth as glass. Sure, we managed a little rain, but it was nothing as far as our standards for storms.
    Hurricane Georges wasn't done yet. So they told us to head for Mobile, Alabama. By the time we would get there, they would further pin down our location to put us in the eye of the Hurricane.
    Derrick and I were tired. And we headed straight out from Marco Island, up through the armpit of Florida, across the panhandle, and into Mobile.
    We were both so tired, we switched off every time we filled with gas. The truck would stop, and Derrick would yell at me, "TIME TO GET UP, F&*%HEAD!"
    I would pry myself out of the passenger chair, to into the convenience store to get a MONDO-sized cup of coffee, finish filling up the tank, pay for the gas, and then jump into the driver seat, only to look over to see Derrick already asleep on the passenger side.
    After the fourth fillup, we were burning across the last of the panhandle, and I woke up to sweat pouring down my forehead into my eyes. The road was all blurry, with the salty water in my eyes, and with the sun beating down. It was like trying to look through waxed paper. I woke up, looked around, and said something like, "What the hell?"
    Derrick laughed at me, told me that what was left of the air conditioning went out a few hours ago. I asked what happened to the tunes, and he responded that the radio had also gone out a few hours ago. He had also apparently tried to reach over the top of me to open the other window while he was driving, but must have given up after either almost going off the road or given up because he was dripping sweat all over me and didn't want to wake me up.
    We first pulled into Pensacola, where we met up with John Innes, who was working for the Weather Channel, and our own producer and reporter.
    Within moments of pulling up, our producer informed us that we were already too far east, so don't get comfortable because we would be leaving for Mobile, Alabama. There we would stay the night while we figured out if we would be going further west or not.
    When we arrived in Mobile, the producer talked us into going out with them. We agreed, then ended up at this seafood restaurant where we were brought through this "trip down memory lane" by our producer, who lived some of her life in Mobile. Every once in a while, she would wipe away a tear about something, and her "partner" would say that it's gonna be O.K. She also complained that she and her partner had a room with two double beds, and that they were trying to push the two beds together to make one bed. I commented very loudly that boy, there sure is a lot of varnish on this table. There must have been a gallon of varnish on that table.
    Later, they complained more about their room, and Derrick laughed that he had a king-sized bed in his room, with a jacuzzi and a big-screen TV. I said that I had the same thing, and I couldn't wait to get back and fill up that hot tub.
    Immediately, the producer started telling me about how one of us needed to change rooms with them. So I looked at Derrick like I'd just messed up, and then I immediately asked him if he was going to belly up to the wet bar when we got back. I said that when I got back, I was going to have the complimentary Swedish massage after a good soak in the hot tub.
    The producer rolled her eyes, and said to her partner that she knew we were making it all up. Whew! Situation averted: We went back to stay in the nicest rooms we'd ever seen.
    The next morning, bright and early, we were told to go to Biloxi, Mississippi. And in the world of storm chasing, that's a little like going from one ride to another at the county fair. You know that both rides will probably kill you, but at this point, you're just happy to be moving.
    We arrived at Biloxi, and were immediately working again. We did a ton of live shots for local affiliates, and where eventually convinced that we would have to move.
    We moved across the street and down the road to the Presidents casino. There were already a few trucks there, tucked behind some of the casino's hotel rooms. And we recognized one of the trucks as a former coworker of ours. We immediately stopped by, and opened the door to find Carl. We said hello, but asked if he knew where our friend Sean was at. Carl said he'd been fired, and after seeing the looks on our faces, he told us how Sean had been fired for having his way with Sheep. He regailed us with a tale of how he not only had his way with one Sheep, he had his way with many sheep. And when the looks on our faces shifted, he said that Sean was inside getting something to eat.
    When we walked up to his table and said hello, Sean looked up and said hey, but in the process, never stopped the shoveling motion of food into his mouth. After the next fork-full, he asked how was it going, and then shovelled another bunch into his mouth.
    Wow. We were starting to get an idea what we were in for. At that moment, as we started to pull cable, we worked continually for the next three or four days, doing live shots and tape feeds for 24-hours a day.
    A lot of the rest of the story was a blur. I vividly remember watching very large things float into and away from shore, which started about 200 yards away, and ended up about 50 yards away.
    When the eye of the hurricane hit, and we'd been without power for the second day, I was awakened in my pitch-black room by the sound of the world falling down around all of us.
    I felt around the room for my shoes, then pulled them on with a squish that reminded me of walking through knee-deep mud. When I walked outside, the water was flowing down around me in every direction so hard that I could barely hold myself upright. Every blink of my eyes was barely enough to see even the blurriest of images. But I knew my way around in the dark enough to figure out how to find the truck. Half a tree had broken off and missed the sat trucks by less than 10 feet. The big piece of tree was too big to be moved by hand, so it was eventually towed out by a truck.
    The best we could do for video was less than a minute. Every few seconds of video looked like the camera was being thrown into a pool, there was so much water hitting the lens.
    The nearby Air Force Base clocked windspeeds that night at 172 miles an hour.
    Shortly after Georges fizzled out, we were to make our way back into Florida where we would meet up with another Hurricane. I remember that we found some Rum and "Old Crow," or "The Dirty Bird," a whiskey so nasty you have to howl at the moon after you drink a shot.
    At one point, we ended up at an Irish Bar, where I yawned during a song, and was forced to kiss the butt of a painting of a woman on the wall, which was long the tradition at this particular bar.
    After every hurricane, we tried to make a tradition of a few of these shenanigans. Derrick and I managed to surf the aftermath of a couple hurricanes. John, who is a little older and wiser than the two of us, was usually along for the ride. But I do recall that he was often the driver and can be held just as responsible for getting us to and from some of the places we went to goof off.
    I look at these guys now, much more responsible and matured. But I know what's underneath it all. Once the camera is off and there's nothing but downtime until the next shot, one of them has a frisbee or a football and is yelling at me to "go long."