Outsider’s Inside 
Taking a Break from the Cold to Go Ice Fishing
20/02/201218:20
I’ve had enough of covering all the protests and rallies in Moscow over the past few weeks (with still more to come) in the freezing cold and took the opportunity to do something else in the cold I’ve never done…
On Sunday, I went to an ice fishing festival about two hours outside Moscow to film the event. It was great to get out of the city and see smiling faces and lots of families just going out and enjoying the day together in the fresh winter air. The weather was incredible with the sun even warming your face a bit as we walked around the frozen Mozhaisk Reservoir where a fishing competition was being held. There were around 3,000 people out there on the ice fishing. Some actually set up tents with a barbeque and tables out on the ice, with lots of food and drink. I was invited by one large group to join them, but, alas, I was on duty in front of the camera, so I couldn’t imbibe.
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I used to fish a lot when I was a kid, but when I “grew up,” that took a back seat. I used to like going deep-sea fishing in the Pacific Ocean (I did that last year and wrote about it in one of my blogs). However, this is the first time I went ice fishing. OK, I really wasn’t ice fishing, but pretending to just to get the shot in. Then again, I was actually fishing if you come to think of it because I was holding a small pole in my hand and the line with bait were in the water.
Ice fishing is a lot of hard work though. Especially at the beginning when you have to bore a hole into three feet of ice just to get to the water. The camera guy asked me to drill another hole so he could get the shot at another angle, so I began to make the second hole, but only drilled into the ice a bit…I was too pooped after the first one.
Joining me in ice fishing was my coworker from Mexico (obviously she was doing the same story only in Spanish). She’s a lot of fun and has a lot of character. Some of the scenes you don’t get to see in the video on RIA Novosti’s site because they were bloopers or us just acting silly, for example, when they were blasting the song Back in the USSR (by the Beatles) and Lily and I began dancing and singing on the ice, me standing and she sitting on a case over the ice hole holding the rod in her hands.
One of the other great bloopers on that day was when I was doing a stand-up (that’s when the correspondent is shown on the screen telling the story). It was actually a sit-down instead of a stand-up. So I’m sitting there talking into the camera over the ice hole when Lily, who’s been suffering from a cold the last few days, walks into the shot behind me practicing her lines and blowing her nose into a bright blue handkerchief. Then she notices what she’s done, puts on her “shocked face,” and then quickly runs out of the shot. I obviously had to do the stand-up all over again.
We actually enjoyed working on Sunday. I think we both needed to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city and just relax and have fun because we do our share of serious news all the time.
I hope to have lots more of this type of working day, it really clears the head, even if we didn’t catch anything.
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