News-Record.com

Back in the media room at Cameron, waiting for Duke players to finish up practice and come in to answer the question.

I had to make a quick trip down to Atlanta last Thursday to cover the Wake-Georgia Tech game, filling in a hole like a young Tim Flannery. Since it was a trip made on short notice, I did it on the cheap.

How did it turn out? Let me tell you this. If by chance, a friend suggests you take a trip down to the Dirty South and suggests that you grab a room at the Days Inn Airport ... run. Very fast. And don't turn around. The final scorecard on the room - one lamp out of three that worked, a bathtub that wouldn't drain, one towel and a kleenex holder that had been ripped out the wall.

Nonetheless, this intrepid reporter made it back home on Friday and then headed out to the Va Tech-Duke game on Sunday night. That's when things got interesting. As I was writing my story on deadline, I couldn't figure out where all of my audio files had gone on my digital recorder. I didn't have much to think about it though, and managed to finesse the article.

It wasn't until today, then, as I was trying to transfer audio files to my computer that I realized how horribly wrong things had gone. Two minutes into listening to an interview with the Longwood women's basketball coach that I was pretty sure I hadn't conducted, I realized that my beloved Olympus 240PC had been ... kidnapped? recordernapped?

Fortunately my reporter skills kicked in and I managed to track my recorder to a reporter at the Lynchburg News & Advance. Somehow we picked up each other's Olympus during the frenetic post-game interview fray. My baby should be on its way home, via the U.S. mail.