Crashes and Cars and Jesse Jackson, Oh My!

That's probably the worst play on the Wizard of Oz line for a headline ever, but I'm staying late after work to uphold my blog updating promise.

So sue me.

Here's the aftermath of a semi rolling into a bank. The driver didn't set the parking brake on his rig while he grabbed a bite next door and a gust of wind pushed it across the street. No one was hurt, but the driver was embarrassed. "They probably thought I was robbing the bank," he said. He declined to give me his name, acknowledged that we'd be able to get it from the police anyways and asked that we didn't print his name.

We printed his full name, age and where he's from. I won't do that here.

Happy, Randell?

That was before heading out to the highway to shoot an illustrative piece about a section of Highway 240 between Kennewick and Richland, which, according to a DOT survey records the highest average speeds of any 60 mph highways in Washington—an unimpressive 63.2 mph average. Granted, more than 1,500 were clocked at 90 mph or faster, but c'mon, Washingtonians...63.2 average? That better factor in a couple traffic jams or something.

Anyways, I tried out a zoom burst for a story that I didn't think needed a photo, and actually, it didn't even run next to the story. This ran on A1, while the story ran on B1, and there was no teaser for the actual story next to my photo. It did run 2.5 columns, though, so I'm not really complaining.

Finally, the Rev. Jesse  Jackson stopped by the local WSU satellite campus to wrap up his two-day Tri-Cities tour. If you're interested, you can read about why he was visiting here and here. They served food that appeared semi-appetizing and Jackson had kind of a free form ramble. He seemed most enthused about answering students' questions, but unfortunately had a plane to catch and only had time to answer a couple.