Barsky’s Blog

03/14/2011

It's an arduous slog through a seemingly endless trail where hard work and hope are the only things keeping you alive. But you are not alone. You become one with the others with until each and every obstacle the day presents is overcome. You rest easy, only to wake the next day to do it all over again. You know it will eventually come to a bittersweet end that will ultimately leave you feeling satisfied, yet you are hungry for more.

Another season of Dirty Jobs? The Alaskan Iditarod? Or just the ineloquent musings of yet another hack blogger?

You guessed correctly: It's all of the above.

Another season of Dirty Jobs production is upon us. We were supposed to be shooting our first segment of the new run tomorrow, however, your favorite would-be host has fallen ill. We will continue in earnest next month, with a high priority of profiling people who hold jobs in the six states we have yet to visit: New Mexico, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alabama and Virginia.

But more important this past week was the start of the Iditarod. We visited race legend Martin Buser a couple of years ago. As you may recall, one of his dogs, Lear Jet, had a litter the day we shot and Martin named the five pups after members of our crew: Mike, Glover, Barsky, Paff and Lady Jones. And this year, Mike, Barsky and Glover are running in the race! Our rookie canine counterparts are on a team driven by Happy Trails handler and rookie musher Magnus Kaltenborn. We met Magnus (now 21) when we shot the Dirty Jobs segment and he took us out for personal rides the next day.

Let it be known though, that there are no expectations for Magnus and our team. The idea is to get the newer dogs used to the course. Nonetheless, we are cheering Magnus and "our" dogs just as much as we are Martin.

For some reason the minus-20-degree temperature did not affect Martin as much as it did myself.

Barsky the producer holds Barsky the future Iditarod champ on the day of his birth.

Last month, our Dirty Jobs post production producer, Tessa Treadway, took a trip up to Happy Trails and visited our team. Enjoy these pics of our now- 2-year-old namesakes!

Go Martin! Go Magnus! Go Team!

Mike's namesake was sidelined with a shoulder injury just prior to the big race, but made it anyway! Sounds like Mike himself!

I know that face! Glover dog must be thinking about Barsky dog in this shot.

Barsky is "long-legged," not quite like myself. But he is described as "pretty confident." Good dog.

This is Paff. As you can see, she's just as mellow as our cameraman!

Aptly, Lady Jones is the smallest of the bunch and tends to look a bit hung-over.

03/09/2011

As many of you may know, the namesake spaceship of our mothership network returned from its final journey today. As someone who as always believed in the promise of space exploration, I was excited to have an opportunity to work with NASA on Dirty Jobs when we shot the space crawler segment in January of 2007.

We had an even uniquer visit with the Discovery as she was being refurbished between flights...

Please enjoy these photos...