The Tall Intern: Days 2 and 3 a.k.a 2Live Crew

PURDUE HAS A ROWING TEAM?
This was originally published on Saturday, May 24, but it fits in here so I'll post it anyway.

I've decided to combine these two days into one post for two reasons. One, I pretty much did the same thing for both days, so if I wrote two posts I'd basically be repeating myself. Two, If I tried to write two posts I'd get lazy and not finish. So, whoomp, here it is.

Day 2 started off well enough. I didn't have to show up till 2 pm (we in the business call that a perk), and my boss congratulated me for not quitting, then he said that he had the STORY for me. What was the story about? Steriods? Recruiting violations? Dead horses?

Uh-uh. The Purdue crew team.

I didn't know much about crew. Only that it involved a buttload of rowing, everybody who did it had six-pack abs, and I probably couldn't fit in the boat. Other than that I was clueless.


They were coming off a huge win at the historic Dad Vail regatta, whatever the hell that was, and had some major championship races coming up. I was assigned to do a feature on them for Saturday. And what was more, when I called the coach up, he invited me to go out on the Wabash River with the team in a boat while the team practiced.

I, knowing my size, declined, despite their insistence that I could fit on the boat. I probably could, but I wasn't exactly dressed for rowing, or being on the water but I was going to anyway. I instead opted to travel with the coach on his speed boat.

And so there I found myself, dear and probably nonexistent reader, my second day on the job and I'm sitting in a rickety speedboat with a guy I've never seen before down the Wabash River. Who'da thunk?

So I rode with this dude for the better part of two hours, picking his brain about all things rowing and watching a bunch of sweaty men row boats. Good times...

I saw some other things too, some eagles flying through the trees, and some bighead carp jumping out the water trying to take my head off, all against a backdrop of the Wabash River in the summer. It looked like a scene out of a nature movie...or Deliverance.

After all that was done, I talked to a couple of crewers(?) and booked, the article wasn't due till Saturday and I was way ahead of myself. I'd work on it later. Thus ended Day Two...


Day Three saw me working on the article for most of the day, I wrote most of the info before I started transcribing quotes, like I usually do. I was halfway through listening to the longest interview with a crew coach ever when my recorder started acting up, getting all loud and scratchy and crap. And in the process of trying to fix the problem I accidentally erased all of my interviews from the previous day, basically rendering the whole f-in' boat ride useless.

Well, poop.

Never fear, readers. I had an idea. I knew they were practicing again on the river that day, but practice was almost over. I sped down to the Wabash to get some new quotes, which meant I was going to have to rework my questions to try to get all of the coaches and players I talked to yesterday to repeat EVERYTHING THEY SAID...you know, like a real journalist.

Luckily I had another subject I said I wanted to delve into, so I had a tiny bit of cover from blatantly asking questions again. I got everything I needed...again...and went back to the office to write my article. And then I found out that it would have a spiffy video with it too. Great, more pressure...

So anyway, there's the story behind it, I hope you find your life richer for having read it.

The Tall Intern: Day 1

CHECK THIS CRAP OUT!!!

Sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. But seriously, great story, you should read it dozens of times and e-mail it to all your friends.

For those of you who don't know, I'm now one of the two sports desk interns for the Lafayette Journal and Courier in the beautiful town of Lafayette, Ind. Now, I haven't done any research into this, but I'm pretty sure I'm the tallest intern in J&C history. While this will probably make me feel better if and probably when my articles start sucking, it does have some nasty side effects, such as everyone from the managing editor to the theater critic asking how tall I am, and then subsequently inviting me to be on the staff basketball, softball, and bocce teams. This leaves me to wonder how long it will take them to figure out that I'm so uncoordinated that when I try to blink I end up winking one eye after the other.

There was no grace period in this internship. After lunch with the sports editor and a quick tour of the premises, I was thrust right into the thick of things with an assignment right off the bat. I was sent out to a really classy parking lot in front of a really classy Meijer to the first stop in the Indianapolis Colt's Make It Personal tour. That means I would get to talk to a couple of Colt's players and maybe try to steal a grope from a cheerleader or two.

What players did they send out? Peyton "Eli's Brother" Manning? Marvin "Handgun" Harrison? Jeff "Night Fever" Saturday?

Nope.

I got Kelvin Hayden, a starter but not top tier, and Kyle Shotwell, a scrub who got picked up from the waiver wire. Okay, not a lose your bowels type moment but I'm guessing it was two more NFL players than YOU talked to on Monday. I also talked to a couple of the Colts fans in attendance, who included a very nice couple with four kids all decked out in Colts gear, a dude with three teeth, and some kook who looked like he played on the Baltimore Colts and kept asking me why he couldn't take as many pictures as he wanted with the players.

But it was all good. I wrote the article, and got published in the J&C my first day on the job. Not too shabby...

DUMB JOCK QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I think it's just really important to let people from the outskirts of Indianapolis who are maybe just a little further away from the direct people in the city to kind of get a chance to taste what the Colts are all about, the tradition, and to meet some of the guys."-Kyle Shotwell, from the tour stop in LAFAYETTE, INDIANA, which is approximately an hour away from Indy and cannot in any way be confused with its "outskirts". Kelvin Hayden said much of the same thing. Methinks they slept in the limo ride up here.

Honorable mention goes to the aforementioned kook.

Days 2-4 are upcoming, I swear.