Outdoor assignments

I'm really not a morning person, but a reporter's schedule has to be very flexible. It's even harder to get up early on the weekend, but since we all rotate the weekend shift, I had no choice last Saturday but to rise at 7:30 a.m. so I could head out into the wilderness with photographer Andy Cripe for an assignment (he took the photo here).
We were out near the local watershed, watching a helicopter lift Douglas firs from the national forest and drop them into a local creek to create fish habitat. We had a spectacular viewpoint, and a small crowd of folks gathered to watch with us. It was a long drive, and an early morning, but the photographs and the story, which runs tomorrow, should pay off.
It also enabled me to ensure that we had a front page package ready for tomorrow, as I'm filling in as city editor today so it's my responsibility to plan ahead for tomorrow's edition. By doing a little extra work and getting the story done several days ahead, it's less of a headache today, when I have a lot of other things to think about.