Rabulous

For someone who hits the snooze button 15 times a morning, 5am hit like a ton of bricks today. I was the overly eager one last Friday who confirmed this specific early morning work assignment. Truly, there is no glamour in waking up and leaving the house when it’s still dark out, especially when public transportation hasn’t even begun its early morning shifts yet!

As I headed east to the Hudson to catch the ferry, the sun started to peek out from behind the skyline. When I boarded the commuter ferry, from a distance, I could see the commotion of what was my latest work assignment. It’s funny, but great, how in the past week or so, I’ve seen more stories about my industry, than I’ve seen in a while.

I got off the ferry and walked a few blocks north to Pier 86. The behemoth that shadowed me, the hundreds of chipper morning news people and the parking lot surrounding us, is the focus for the day: The 27,000-ton decommissioned Naval vessel-turned Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, was set to be towed from its berth to the Bayonne Drydock, just 5 miles down the river.

Because of work and the beat that I follow, I’ve been on many boats, small ones, big ones, rickety ones, shiny ones, classified ones, ginormous ones and even smelly ones; but today, I was on one that I’d never been on before– a media boat. Rarely, if ever, does my line of work coincide with consumer news, like the NY Post or the Daily News. Today, however, was a whole different story.

While they all stood portside, I was starboard with only a few others, knowing that the media boat would turn ever so slightly in my favor, giving me better angles for pictures or standing closer to those ‘in the know.’ When one of the captains started spewing propeller, dredge and chock talk, I nodded my head with another colleague, instead of the silly side tilt and forehead wrinkle of the ignoramuses.

I can’t tell you how funny it was listening to the Fox 5 guy trying to enunciate exactly what was going on. (and how hard it was to not pull a Jim Carrey in front of his camera.) He must have repeated the same sentence in 6 different ways.

Even though I don’ t know all there is to know about this stuff and I always joke about how unglamorous my work can be, but today, I felt like quite the badass. It doesn’t take much.

Basically, even though there were 7 tugs pulling, the 900 ft. Intrepid barely went anywhere. With Hillary Clinton, several other dignitaries, hundreds of invited guests and swarms of vessels abound, when it came down to it, 30,000 combined horsepower had nothing on Mother Nature and the mud that essentially cemented the vessel’s 4 props. Even though they did a good deal of dredging beforehand, someone either missed a big chunk or that whole problematic area was overlooked.

Some media outlets are incorrectly saying that it is stuck in the mud; actually, it moved about 10-12 feet on the initial pull, but then it was sucked back and then, grounded despite the high tide. Despite what everyone else is saying, the towing company made a great effort in light of the natural obstacles.

In order to forge ahead with the $60m refurb job, they’ve got to survey and come up with a “what now” plan. With all the money, agencies, companies, pomp and circumstance that’s involved, I’d like to believe, they’re going to have to figure this one out pretty quick, especially with all the coverage it got.

All in all, it was a fun day at the office. You know your work day is pretty interesting (or questionable) when it makes headlines on MSN and Yahoo.

*Link to my coverage will be filed over at the tab called Portfolio