I've got a brand new gray hair today...

Oh man... I feel like I really had a chance to knock in a game winning home run today. 

It was the perfect matchup: Me vs. An Awesome Story.

But sometimes in baseball and in writing, your worst enemy is yourself... it turned into a Me vs. Me battle today and the stress/indecision on my part developed yet another gray hair in my lustrous bouffant.

All writing requires good decision making in what to put in a story and what to leave out. This is especially true in broadcast because of the premium of time.

I met this amazing guy with literally 19 layers of cool stories and surprises... focusing that all down to one layer for my news story tonight felt like I was cheating him.

Enough of my confession: I've been awfully honest in the blog recently, I feel very vulnerable.

LET'S MEET TONIGHT'S CHARACTER:

That is Bill Fadeley. He's an airboat captain here in Jacksonville. He is a beautiful person inside an out (clearly).

Here's a shot of him on First Coast News back in the 80s.

Long story short: He set out to break a world record in airboat travel by leaving Jacksonville and going all the way to New York back in 1986. That's 1100 miles. That has never been done.

However, a couple chipped vertebrae, some terrible whiplash, and a little nerve damage later Guinness told him, "Thanks, but no thanks."

They didn't have a category for such things 25 years ago.

The cool thing is, time heals all and can change heats... so a quarter century after his trip the Guinness people changed their minds and gave him his record. He got the letter in April and was in the October 2012 Guinness Book of World Records (page 121 under the Fantastic Voyages heading).

Here's The Story/Video from today's show

_____________________________________________________________________________

1. This guy also takes his airboat out for every Jags home game in an effort of solidarity. 

2. He imported the first ever African beer (Ngoma) to the United States.

3. His 99-year-old father helped build the first lunar lander module for the space program.

4. He travels to Africa on missionary and service work, and goes on gorilla expeditions.

5. He's pretty cool.

Just a few of the layers to Bill. He took me for a ride in his boat around the St. Johns river downtown Tuesday. I'll share a few of the stills from my video:

The Miss Jacksonville, 16 feet long

Here's the captain cruising under the Main St Bridge

We also did a little bit of minor trespassing today on a private dock. I needed to get some wide shots of our hero from land. 

He took me to some guys yard and dropped me off at a dock.

"It'll be ok," he told me. 

I believed him.

The home owner, who was surprisingly nice considering he could have had me arrested, simply told me to get lost.

I explained I'd need Bill to come and pick me back up, as I wasn't planning on swimming 3 nautical miles to the airboat.

That made for an awkwardly silent 7 minutes while I waited for him to come pick me up.

I still managed a few shots though.

That's him leaving me in the dust at the dock.

That last pic is him racing back to get me. 

Alright, good couple of days. A comic book and airboat hero yesterday and today. 

Would love your stories: send 'em my way... lewisturner@firstcoastnews.com

Talk later,

Lew