About a month ago, we got an email through our blog from the Roanoke Times asking if we'd be interested in doing the weather spot on their daily webcast. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but Tami was game so we decided to give it a shot.

September 14th was the big day. We arrived at 11:30, and were shown into their webcast studio - a surprisingly large room with walls covered by sound-insulating foam. Multimedia producer Daine Vineyard described how the webcast had evolved over the last year from a closet-sized back room to the present facility. The explosive popularity of blogs and podcasts caught many media outlets completely by surprise; clearly, the Roanoke Times doesn't intend to let that happen with webcasting.

We talked over a variety of ideas about how we could incorporate fitness into a 20-second weather spot. Daine's goal with the webcast weather spot is primarily to keep it fun - people don't tune into this webcast to get an in-depth forecast - so we could do pretty much anything as long as it was at least remotely related to the weather. Several other Roanoke Times folks joined our short brainstorming session and it wasn't long before a concept emerged.

The basic idea was for Tami to do the talking while I suited her up to teach BodyPump class. Originally, I was going to put workout gloves on her hands, put her mic on, then hand her a bar. The first time we tried this she put her hands out opposite of what I expected, and rather than fumble around I simply put her gloves on... backwards. So the whole glove thing got tossed out - and that's why you see her putting her own gloves on while I sort of stand there looking sheepish.

Which reminds me of something. It's a source of never-ending wonder to me how people can look so different in pictures. I, for example, manage have the most ignorant expression on my face in practically every picture I've ever seen of myself. I know I don't look this way in the mirror, and (I hope!) I don't look this way in real life. The camera, on the other hand, loves Tami. Maybe it's because she looks so good in person. But in case you noticed she's featured in most of the pictures on this blog - this webcast not withstanding - it's because I've learned one of life's more humbling lessons: Some of us belong behind the camera!

Promotional Clip

This is a promo video that ran on the Roanoke Times webcast page. The actual webcast would be accessed by clicking on this video (click on it now to play - click again for larger view).

The Webcast

This is our portion of the webcast - the full video (with news, etc.) can be viewed by clicking here.