The Brett Favre madness is officially underway

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Well, my day started out about as normal as possible today until one phone call changed EVERYTHING.

We got a call from someone at our NBC affiliate in Milwaukee who said that Brett Favre was on an airplane headed towards the Twin Cities.

After a few moments of checking things out, I headed out to what would be a moment that I will never forget.

Armed with Matt and Mark, the three of us headed to St. Paul's downtown airport. I had never been to the airport so we missed our exit... oops.

When we finally arrived, there was two or three other video photographers and two still photographers waiting by the entrance to the Signature terminal at the airport.

Once we established our location to shoot video from, we noticed a black Cadillac Escalade parked near the terminal building and I noticed there was an arm visible from my location. A very short time after that, we figured out that arm beloved to Vikings head coach Brad Childress. He was sitting in his car on the tarmac waiting for Favre to arrive.

At first none of us had confirmed that the Signature terminal is where Favre would even be landing but after seeing Childress, we knew we were in position.

A lot of different thought went through my head as a small jet plane approached our area. It wasn't Vikings owner Zygi Wilf's plane but it parked nicely out in front where we could all see it. That's what we envisioned would happen when Favre landed.

But of course, that is not what happened. About 10 minutes after that first plane landed, Favre's plane landed and we all went into action. The plane approached us just as that first plane had, but as it got closer, the plane suddenly turned to the left and started heading down an alley near some hangars. At that point, the only thing I heard was "RUN!"

Before I even knew what was going on, the throngs of photographers were literally sprinting down the sidewalk to get the shot of Favre getting off the plane. Me? I didn't sprint but that's only because I have a bad back.

I was told to stay where I was to get the car driving out of the lot. When my time came, I was armed and ready and I got the shot of him driving off with Childress. Now normally, when I shoot video, I keep the eye that is not looking into the viewfinder closed. It allows me to concentrate on the image in the viewfinder. But today, I actually had to open my other eye to see for myself that it was actually Brett Favre sitting in the passenger seat and not some other random person.

If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would have doubted that it was him. But here we are now in the Brett Favre Vikings era. The madness has officially begun but I have to wonder how this will all end up?

The one thing I will say after looking at the Vikings website today... I think they've known about this for a very long time. It would have taken a lot more time to get those graphics ready in one day!

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