Here's to another year of Lake County adventures

• Lake Superior sunrise

This is one of the photos that (thankfully) survived a computer failure this fall. It was taken during a sunrise fishing trip on Lake Superior in Steve Dahl’s boat.

Talk about it

One favorite memory from my first seven months at the News-Chronicle took place in the process of writing a story about Steve Dahl, a fisherman from Knife River, which was published in September. Steve was very kind and let me tag along on one of his daily fishing trips. I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. which is NOT standard for me, but the beautiful sunrise was worth it. I got a bunch of fantastic pictures and spent the rest of the day working on other stories.

Then, disaster struck. That afternoon, my computer crashed just after I had transferred all of the pictures to my hard drive. I frantically called our IT team, and asked if they could recover the pictures. After scolding me for not saving them on our stable network, they said it was unlikely they could retrieve my photos. After a mini-breakdown fueled by exhaustion and disappointment, I e-mailed Steve and asked if I could head out with him the next morning to get some more pictures. He kindly agreed, and I once again, met him at the Knife River Marina at 5 a.m.

The morning was decidedly greyer and less stunning than the previous trip, but grey pictures were better than no pictures. The lake was a little more bad-tempered, too, so I spent most of the fishing trip trying to ignore my seasickness as I half-heartedly snapped pictures. I trudged into the office around 6:30 a.m. with my substandard pictures and a brutal case of exhaustion. I had to work on a different computer since mine was down for the duration and there I finished up my stories and chugged coffee.

Then, our IT specialist Jon showed up. He monkeyed around a bit with my computer, trying to figure out what had happened. After about 20 minutes, with little fanfare, he pressed the on button and the machine came to life again. My hard drive hadn’t crashed; it was an easily repaired mechanical failure. The pictures were still there. I nearly screamed with joy and I’m so glad those beautiful pictures survived to grace the pages of the News-Chronicle.

Working for the News-Chronicle is always an adventure, whether I’m covering controversial breaking news or writing stories about our neighbors, like Steve. Although the stories aren’t always easy and many things can go wrong—like my near-disaster experience with the pictures—it’s always an entertaining ride.

I hope we can continue offering you a great mix of hometown stories and important news in the New Year and, as always, let us know how we can improve. You can reach me at lsandretsky@lcnewschronicle.com or 834-2141.

Tags: opinion