Perils of the Profession

So I’m in Mason City, Iowa, at Gotham Pizza & Gaming, my IBM ThinkPad laptop propped on a foosball table in the gaming room.

I’m working on a story about Mike Huckabee, who’s in the next room. We’ve been up since 5 EST chasing him around the state, Des Moines to Fort Dodge to Mason City.

The Arkansas Governor seems in good spirits. He did a McCain-esque 40-minute press availabilty after Fort Dodge.

Anyway, so I’m writing it all up and then my Blackberry/cell phone (aka my electronic umbilical cord) falls into the goal of the foosball table.

Let me explain what a foosball table in Mason City, Iowa, is like. It’s big. It’s oak. It’s heavy.

There were no ways to reach into the bowels of the foosball table to retrieve my — now ringing — cell phone.

Oh, no.

Luckily, my producer Richard Coolidge — exactly the kind of all-business problem-solver you want as a wingman in a situation like this — is on hand.

He asks the owners if they have the key to the table (to access the quarters and perhaps the Blackberry).

They do not.

Then Coolidge suggests we tip the Buick-sized game onto its side, with the aid of Politico’s Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen.

Out of the goal spills the Blackberry.

Hooray!

– jpt