Entry number 2 in an ongoing series chronicling the making of Meteorite Men, the science/adventure show I co-host with world famous meteorite hunter Steve Arnold. Exclusive to TucsonCitizen.com

Okay, so we have the deal. It’s all very exciting. Our friends at Science Channel have ordered an entire series of Meteorite Men shows and that means we have a lot of work to do. Here is the scary part: from concept to its world premiere, our one-hour pilot had a luxurious seventeen months to germinate. And we knew where we were going to shoot as well. Steve had made amazing discoveries at two different sites within the U.S., and we were still working at both of them, so the location choices were easy. Now we have a clean slate to work with and it gets a little more complicated—and we surely do not have the seventeen months to spend on each episode this time around.

Steve and I put our heads together and came up with a list of places we wanted to go explore: places that were perhaps scenic, interesting, historic, strange, or fascinating for one reason or another—and where we could also find meteorites. Well, where we hope we could find meteorites. There were over a hundred place names on that list, so we had to whittle it down somewhat.

Next comes the equipment. We are gearheads and experimenting with new, exciting, cool-science gadgets is one of the best parts of doing this job. We’re working with a few outfits to acquire fun things to play with on camera, some of which are entirely new and not even on the market yet. Other devices we will be designing and building ourselves. In the pilot Steve says something like: “You can’t go to the meteorite hunting aisle of your favorite mega-store and get the things you need.” It’s very true, so when the things we want are not available we just build them.

While the gear is being sorted out we have to plan the scouting. I have a bad habit of thinking: It’ll be fine, let’s just get up to the site and figure it all out, but when it comes to expeditions, that’s a not-very-helpful facet of my spontaneous personality. Planning is important. It’s important when it’s just two guys out hunting in the desert with a couple of metal detectors, and it’s vital when you have a film crew, and a support staff, and all kinds of vehicles, cameras, and hi-tech gear trundling around with you. If the schedule is off, you suddenly have a lot of expensive television professionals standing around waiting for the hovercraft to arrive, or something.

So, in order to hopefully minimize scheduling disasters, Steve and I, and some of our producers and teammates have been out and about making the rounds. It is a very good idea to visit potentially hazardous locations with just a couple of people, before bringing the entire troupe in.

And that is how I was almost struck by lightning.

Last week I was out scouting in the mountains. We had a pretty solid report of a meteorite-related structure being discovered in the Chiricahuas. We are hoping to do a little filming here in Tucson, next year. It’s a natural with the world’s biggest gem show in town, so some contemporaneous Arizona field work wouldn’t be amiss. I traveled up to the site with a friend who knows the area really well. My 4WD truck has a big V6 engine and lots of clearance but there were some spots on this trail that I thought were going to be too much for us. It was surely one of the roughest off-road tracks I have ever traveled.

Eventually, we made it to the side of a slope so precarious we just sat there, several thousand feet up, with the wheels slowly spinning and sending a stream of rock chips cascading down the slopes behind us. It burns gas and it’s bad for the tires. “I think this is as far as we go,” I said. So we suited up, got our backpacks, rock hammers, metal detectors, a couple of large-caliber revolvers (you don’t want to be out in those parts without some serious protection), cameras, binoculars, and anything else we could carry, and started hiking. Remember please, it is August in southern Arizona, and that’s more gear that you really want on a hot day.

We’d only gone a few hundred yards when unpleasantly dark storm clouds began rushing furiously over the mountain peak ahead of us. We weren’t sure if the whooshing sound was rain or wind and it turned out to be both. We ran back to the truck as a massive downpour started. Water flowed under the wheels of my truck, parked awkwardly at an angle on the steep, steep track, because I didn’t dare leave only the breaks to defy that much gravity.

We waited it out. It wasn’t too bad. Lightning hit all around; the ground breathed in moisture and I recalled cowering from European thunderstorms as a kid in London. After about 20 or 30 minutes the front passed, the sky cleared up considerably and we got out of the truck. We were both readjusting our gear when lightning struck a telephone pole not thirty feet from where we were standing. It was one of those freaky and astonishing moments when you hear the crackling before the thunderclap, and that means it’s awfully close. The blast knocked my buddy’s hat off, and left us with ringing in the ears and nasty headaches for the rest of the day.

All that, and the site didn’t turn out to be what we’d hoped. But that is okay too and exactly why we do the scouting first. There are plenty more places to go, and I’ll be taking you along with us.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Meteorite Men TV Diary, Technology. Tags for this post: meteorite hunting, Meteorite Men, Science Channel, Steve Arnold, television show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.