The Carolina Traveler team spent this day at one of the most beautiful places in the Carolinas, the Cape Lookout National Seashore. We had a long, but fun day ahead of us when I got a message on my cell phone from my wife. The jovial little voice said “Happy one year anniversary……. from your back surgery.”

I had totally forgotten. While the Gulf Coast was about the have their levees break, I was unconscious on an operating table at Presbyterian hospital. Mike and I even did a story on it following me up to surgery time. I was a nervous, drugged up wreck while my buddy Mike teased my operating team. What a pal. (The story was actually my second surgery as the first one didn’t take, but for the sake of keeping it short, this was the day my surgeries started).
Mike is always giving me my props on the show and in his journal so I often forget people know I had a microdiscectomy. How’s that for using the medical jargon! So when Mike and I meet someone on a story, the first question I get is “How’s your back?”

Well, my poor beaten spinal column got put to the test this past week. See the picture over there? That’s where we shot an interview about the Cape Lookout Lighthouse. What an incredible view. It’s over 150 feet high and over 200 steps to the top. The public isn’t even allowed up there. It’s definitely a good little walk up there. So what if it was over 90 degrees out. There nothing like a mixture of sweat and sun tan lotion stinging the eyes.

Oh yeah, see that forty pound camera and tripod I’m holding? Well, it didn’t go up on the elevator. Good old manual labor was involved. Keep the chiropractor on stand-by please.

Next up, come check out the wild horses of the Shackleford Banks. This story is going to look incredible when it airs! We’ll have a whole story on the true historic lineage of these beautiful animals. Mike captured another great picture of me at work. But instead of warning me I was getting a bit too close, he opted for the nice photo and hopes of me getting charged by a pack of wild horses.

Great pictures, but what you don’t see on TV is the couple of miles your faithful CT crew hiked up and down and into the island to find these incredible beasts. And as usual, accompanying the CT crew was that wonderful forty pound camera and other twenty or so pounds of accessory gear.

So after four days squeezing through tiny doorways, climbing lighthouse stairs, walking a tightrope to the little plank at the front of a moving sailboat and avoiding the swinging masts of the boat I guess I can safely report that I am still walking upright. Although I can hear the words of Forrest Gump right now, “My legs are just fine, but my back’s crooked like a question mark.”

But these are just some of the sacrifices the Carolina Traveler team makes for every last one of you out there. All we ask in return is for you to turn that television on to WCNC Saturday nights at 7:30.

It’s a great job and someone’s back has to be sacrificed to do it! And yes, my medical insurance is paid up! Stupid is as stupid does, right Forrest?

Andy Benton
Carolina Traveler Sidekick