Recently I was interviewed by two local radio stations, BBC Leeds and York, about crayfish. Originally, they wanted to interview my supervisor, but she's busy and out of town, so my labmate was going to do it, but the day before he was sick, and getting worse, so I agreed to do it. Well, the first interview almost didn't happen. Here's the story...in third person...just for fun.
It is the night before the interview, which is scheduled for 9:45am. Emily plans to arrive at 9:15, that is what the radio people recommended on the phone to her labmate. She goes to bed at 11pm, setting TWO alarm clocks for 7am, her normal waking-up time.
On the day of the interview, Emily awakes, but does not hear an alarm going off. She wonders why, and assumes it is just about to go off, any minute now. Slowly, she notices how light out it seems. Just a little too light. Also, it is raining. "Great," she thinks sarcastically, "going to the station will be pleasant." She gets up, and looks at one of the alarm clocks. It shows that the time is 9:07. Pandemonium ensues as Emily attempts to get dressed, let the dog out, gather the notes her labmate gave her, feed the dog, brush her hair, and figure out how to get to the station on time, in approximately 30 seconds.
She can't drive, the station is on the opposite side of Leeds, traffic is probably gridlock, and there is no where to park anyway. She can't walk, she'd never get there on time. Solution: bicycle. Cursing her recent flat cleaning exploits, she is unable to locate her waterproof over-trousers. Then she remembers that she left her bicycle parked at the office. Amazingly, Emily remembers to let the dog back into the house before fleeing, with an umbrella, to the biology department. Unfortunately, she forgets that her bicycle helmet is not with the bike, but is in fact on the coffee table in her living room. Hurling her helmet-less self on the bike, and leaving her precious, brand new, see-through umbrella by the bike rack, she pedals madly in the direction of the radio station. She will have to ride through downtown Leeds, in just-post-rush-hour traffic, in the rain.
That may seem harsh, but Emily has done that before, in rush hour, and her only real fear is not making it to the interview on time. Crossing campus, she turns onto the first 'real' road of her journey and heads downhill toward downtown. It is then that the car in front of her brakes suddenly, Emily forgets that her own front brakes are much more effective than her rear brakes, and she encounters a patch of slick road surface that is occasionally found on the streets of Leeds. However it happened, she found herself splatted on the road. Now, when one falls on a road, one does not wait around, one gets up as quickly as possible. So, the fall may have appeared more like a bounce to the woman across the road, who asked Emily if she was okay. After giving the woman a thumb's up, Emily rode off quickly.
As she made her way to the station, jumping her bike over small children and dogs that got in her way, she assessed herself for any damage. Things were starting to hurt, but everything was fully functional. Arriving at the station, she flung her loyal steed into a bike rack, flung herself across the street, and flung the door open. It was 9:37am. After signing in, Emily noticed it was very warm in the building. She removed her drenched jacket. She removed her long sleeved shirt. Ah, that was better. Just as she was examining some external damage to her elbows, some radio dude came and fetched her, and they went up into an office, next to the studio. Emily apologizes for being later than expected, blaming the bike incident (it sounds better than "I slept through two alarm clocks") but the radio dude insists that she is on time, and had in fact been expecting her "anytime between 9:30 and 9:45."
While they wait in the office, radio dude offers to get tea or coffee. Emily wants a tissue. She wants it to blow her nose, riding in the rain ups mucus production for some reason, and she doesn't want to sound nasal on the radio. Radio dude misunderstands, thinking it is to mop up the bleeding elbows. Which actually were not actually bleeding actively anyway. Radio dude returns triumphant with enough tissues to mop up an exploded blood donation collection bag. Emily blows nose and enters the studio, leaving the other 5,000 tissues on the chair.
Because of the excitement of the morning, Emily has no ability to produce any more adrenaline in order to be nervous about the interview, which goes very well. The interviewer is very easy to talk to, and hilariously makes a fool of himself by putting down America, only to realize later that Emily is herself an American, and only came to the UK to help with the crayfish invasion problem which the UK actually caused itself. Emily found it hilarious. Particularly because when he had been describing America, she at first thought he was preparing to make fun of Imperial Britain. Then Emily trudges back home, getting even more saturated in the process.
Arriving home, she assesses her wounds, which are basically insignificant, consisting of some scrapes and bruises, puts on dry clothes, and takes the dog for a walk. She marvels at the human body's innate ability to protect its vital organs.
Fin.
Well, interview two was pretty tame in comparison, I took the train to York, puttered around, did the interview where they asked me the same questions the other station had, then I puttered around some more and took the train home. Easy peasy, as they say.
And my wounds have all healed by now. That was about two weeks ago ;) I realize this is a very long post. But. At least I didn't describe each injury in detail, with photos, heh heh heh... but i will mention the coolest was that my right hand knuckles were all scraped, so people kept asking if I got in a fist fight or something. ha ha ha!
Unfortunately it is now my labmate's turn to be injured, having acquired tendinitis two weeks before (hopefully) running a half-marathon.
As you can see in the last photo, he even has a cute little smile. Right now he is sitting at a spare desk at the office, with one claw holding the computer mouse. Maybe he'll surf the web when we all go home tonight...
It was even funnier because one of the attendees was Dr. Hamr...so I referred to him as the hammer of crayfish justice during the conference. He's one of my crayfish heroes, he signed my Ontario crayfish ID booklet, heh heh heh! Anyway, next up we have a krazy kar spotted on a city street. It looks like a hearse. You might want to enlarge it to get the full effect. The Finns seemed to like cruising the streets in the evening, we'd see the same cars pass by maybe 3 or 4 times in an hour or so.
Next up is a creep-tastic image from the crayfish party. That is an Astacus astacus (native species) carapace shoved up in a Pacifastacus leniusculus (introduced species) carapace.
Yes, human-alien hybrid children may also use this crossing.
