“And I said, “Listen! I’ve traveled every road in this here land!”
Dateline: Here, and there, and then, you know….back
2012.
I think, according to the Mayan’s, it was the year of the 4Runner. Over 168 days on the road chasing B.A.S.S., several thousand miles in the driver’s seat (won’t mention the real mileage number yet have to wait to see how much I have to fudge it for the IRS deduction).
I left the house Tuesday February 21…and travelled around the country pretty much constantly until the day of Thanksgiving dinner with the Iaconelli’s on November 17th.
“I’ve Been Everywhere, man
I’ve Been Everywhere, man…”
Between then and there, out there and back wrote 48 stories for B.A.S.S. covering the Elites, college events, Opens and the Bass Nation. Figure my stories tend to be around 1600 words or so…we’re talking 76,800 words (mostly small short ones).
Dudes…that’s a lot of typing…in fact my old MacBook died midway through the last regular season B.A.S.S event of the year at Oneida Lake. I knew it was coming, the letter “P” stopped working at the Classic…”T” died at the Finger Lakes Open.
“…crossed the deserts bare, man
I’ve breathed the mountain air, man…”
Normally, I’m not much of a detail oriented kind of guy, but check this out, when one of my several thousand bosses at B.A.S.S. asked me to put together a photo essay of my favorite photos from the past year I said, “No problem dude…” and got of the phone before he could suggest a deadline to do it in.
Big problem though, you see between 2/21/12 and 11/17/12 while out on the road running with the B.A.S.S. I took, me myself, took 5,273 PHOTOGRAPHS.
“Give me 60,” said the B.A.S.S. boss I mainly try to please while still being able to drown a reasonable amount of Sweet Tea and donuts.
Say what you want but I pretty much have a very successful 30+ year writing career based pretty much entirely on a sugar high.
But 60 dude…come on be reasonable out of 5,273 photos.
When he said he wanted 60…I was sitting very proud of myself having picked a pretty small amount of those 5,273 photos.
350.
Normally I try to get within 30-40% of the alleged word-count they give me, so only 300 over didn’t flip me out as much as it must have others.
At 180 pics I tried to plead my recent brain surgery messed up the part of my head that counts photographs…
“Give me 60….”
So I did…here are 68 of my favorite photos from B.A.S.S. 2012, most are behind the scene stuff, pretty much every dang one is in focus, and you’ll see it chronicles the people of B.A.S.S., the anglers, their families, the towns we visit, and those who come out to watch our roadshow.
It is America between the big blue ponds that kiss our shores.
“…of travel I’ve had my share, man
I’ve Been Everywhere.”
I’ve Been Everywhere
Johnny Cash
Enjoy,
db