The World is Watching, The City is Shoveling

UPDATE: 2pm

Maybe I've been sitting on the anchor desk a little too long.

It seems as though I've lost my sense of the stakeout.

Shortly after the president-elect's news conference today, we set out to find our governor in a less formal setting.

We wanted to ask her about leaving the state at a time of the budget crisis, whether her close association with Obama helped win her the job in Washington. 

We started in the back entrance, finding the secret service looking not so secretive. 

Large SUV's were parked.  Men were talking into their wrists.  Surely this was where the VIP's were coming out.

And they were.  Hillary Clinton and Rom Emmanuel among them.

No Napolitano.

Then we headed indoors, to the main elevators.  Surely it couldn't be this easy?

Sure enough, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder emerged, then U.N. ambassador nominee Susan Rice, then National Security Advisor James Jones.  Then David Axelrod, Obama's chief advisor.

No Napolitano.

Turns out our governor had craftily, or perhaps accidentally, eluded us.

And we had managed to stake out nearly every other member of the president-elect's cabinet.

David Axelrod made a nice interview, but he was, I beg your pardon... no Napolitano.

UPDATE: 8:15am

The crazy thing about history is, there's only one chance to get it right.
 
And the organized chaos, which is a live press conference, everybody wants to make sure they can hear and see.
 
But cameras are much more temperamental than people.  So audio bleeds in, video doesn't work, and connections aren't made.
 
We're twenty minutes out and the president-elect will speak with or without us.
 
Then there's the intimidation factor.  In the glare of the national media, with networks and cable channels taking it live, stand up and ask a question, if you dare.
 
When you're a local station covering these events, you find yourself in the middle of a group of grizzled veterans who've been following this campaign for months.
 
They know the routine and you don't. 

UPDATE: 7am

It was an all-too-familiar sound, but one I hadn't heard in years; the grinding and scraping of metal against concrete. A steady pattern. Several seconds of grinding. Then silence. Repeat.

"Snowplows," I muttered, as I turned over and tried to cover my head with a pillow.

It was 3:00 in the morning.

Chicago is a city that sleeps, because it's a city that gets up mighty early in the morning. Especially when it's snowing.

Few big cities are as well-equipped to handle the worst that mother nature can dish out than this one.

O'Hare, the busiest airport in the world, barely slows down in a snowstorm.

Dumpings which might keep kids out of school for days in other parts of the country are simply a reason to bundle up here and leave a little earlier.

I was going to be out of bed in an hour anyway.

Such is the nature of life on the road, when you're a local reporter covering a piece of the biggest story in the country.

We were up by 4:15 today and out the door by 5:15 to do live reports for ABC 15 Daybreak. We won't wrap up until close to midnight tonight.

Thankfully, I'm in somewhat familiar territory.

Twelve years ago I left Chicago to work in Raleigh, NC. I've journeyed through the south since, and this morning was a cold blustery reminder of the only reason I left.

I say that because despite the weather, I love this city. The downtown area rivals New York during the holidays, but the people are twice as nice.

It's a city with all the cultural amenities, but with a Midwestern attitude.

Today, it's the focus of the biggest story in the country, as the President-elect picks his national security team.

An event, by the way, which is greeted with a collective "no big deal" shrug by the people who live here.

They're used to it.

And they're too busy shoveling.