Even though I was tired and a little cranky, I stopped what I was doing and turned around to say hello. Here was a very well dressed older gentleman and his wife, out for a sunset walk. Taking the air, one might say. The gentleman was a fan of my show, Meteorite Men, asked if we were filming in the area, and when the new season would air. I replied that we were filming in the area, and that the new season would start in November on Science. I then asked him where he was from and he said: “Nowhere.” I thought the man was being glib until he added that he and his wife were both retired and now permanent RV-ers. They wandered the country, spending a month here, a week there, and generally taking their own sweet time to see things that interested them. Apart from the appalling cost in gasoline, it seemed a very attractive lifestyle choice. While I could immediately relate to their peripatetic nature, I felt somewhat envious that they were able to see things at their own relaxed pace, because when we are on the move, we are really on the move, and there is no time for sightseeing.

We began filming for Season Three of Meteorite Men in late June, just in time for the big burn, exactly as we did last year, even though we all hoped we would start earlier and avoid some of the summer heat, but we have to deliver the shows when they are needed. This time around I saw seven countries, six states, many airplanes, many meteorites, two eagles, two sunburns, two near cases of dehydration, two quite severe cactus-related injuries, one amphibious vehicle, one giant nest full of giant storks (and I mean giant), one broken toe, one concussion, one Russian cop who looked exactly like Benny Hill, and plenty of other amazing sights.

Steve and I returned to a couple of favorite sites where we’ve hunted in the past, and also broke exciting new ground, visiting some meteorite locations, and even a country or two that we’d never seen before. We continued to receive valuable academic help from the Center for Meteorite Studies at ASU, and the University of Edmonton in Alberta. The highlight, for me, was doubtless working with our new off-road recon truck, “The Mule.” In an earlier and simpler form it’s been my meteorite hunting vehicle for years, and has actually already appeared in several episodes. But, for our third season we thought the MM needed a rougher, tougher, go-anywhere vehicle, and “The Mule” was born. All-Pro Off Road made the crash bumpers and bed rack for me, my friends at Dan’s Toy Shop put the whole thing together, and 1-Day Paint and Body in Tucson, mixed the color for me specially, because I can be a bit nitpicky about such things. In fact, the story of desinging and building the Meteorite Men truck is so much fun it should probably have its own blog entry later on.

So, here I am back in my office with a broken toe, looking forward to seeing what post-production has done to the new episodes. We had a great team this year. Executive Producer James Rowley directed the first four international episodes, and Jeff Fisher handled the other four. Nice guys, and smart. Our director of photography, Per Larsson, has won two Primetime Emmys and pretty much invented Amazing Race, so I expect the look of the show to be nothing short of dazzling and spectacular. For the last few episodes we were lucky enough to work with cameraman Joe “Boots” Parker, who not only lives here in Tucson, but is a former U.S. Army Ranger, and a wildlife photography specialist. What a superb choice he was for us, and I made a new friend in town. Senior Producer Sonya Bourn returned to keep the entire box of monsters on the road and relatively injury-free, once again, and is the only member of the road crew who made it through all three seasons.

Good people worked hard, traveled far, and brought their expertise to bear. Meteorite Men Season Three will premiere on November 28 at 9 pm on Science. Did we find something rare and amazing in every episode? I really can’t remember. Or, if I can, I am proably not supposed to tell you.

Tune in and find out. I think I can promise you one thing—you won’t be bored.

Text © by Geoffrey Notkin. Photgraphs by Suzanne Morrison © Aerolite Meteorites LLC
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

What I think is that the gem show leaving Tucson would be much like gambling leaving Las Vegas, or the Empire State Building abandoning New York. It’s not going to happen.

My showroom at the Hotel Tucson City Center

February’s annual event has grown—from rather humble hometown beginnings in 1955—into the largest gathering of rockhounds in the world, and then some. About 45 separate shows run consecutively during the first two weeks of February, and if you live here in town you can hardly miss the tents, forklift trucks, dinosaur skeletons, amethyst cathedrals, and the relentless excitable, jolly-pirate carnival-like atmosphere that takes over the Baked Apple for nearly a month. Even though most of the shows run for just about fourteen days, there is preparation time, receiving shipments at customs time, load-in time, set-up time, cocktail hour, break-down time, load-out time, taking-down-the-tents time, so—for the vendors at least—gem show shenanigans go on for three to four weeks.

Our crew filming us at a book signing for an upcoming episode of "Meteorite Men"

This was my fourteenth consecutive gem show, and my fifth as a vendor. Each year I tell myself I’m going to take it a little easier, and I state: “It couldn’t possibly be any busier than last year,” but it always is. This year we did twenty consecutive 12-hour days, at two different locations. Our main display of high-end meteorites and collectibles was situated at the Arizona Mineral and Fossil Show at Hotel Tucson City Center (né InnSuites), with a second outdoor booth at the charmingly scruffy and bargain-friendly Tucson Electric Park Show. On top of the two selling locations I had two book signings (my new book Meteorite Hunting was published on February 1, which also happens to be my birthday), three radio interviews, a weekend of shooting with our production company for an upcoming episode of Meteorite Men, production meetings, regular meetings, two tents destroyed by freak winds, a birthday party, an awards ceremony, plus the requisite buying, selling and trading of space rocks.

The Tucson gem and mineral shows are a rockhound's delight

Something that has grown tremendously in popularity within my clockwork universe is the “Is this a meteorite?” request. Enthusiastic rock hounds who, perhaps, watch my TV series, and have also been out patrolling the perimeter, bring in unusual rocks for me to look at. It really is fun in moderation, but too many strange rocks does interfere with commerce, and it’s especially complicated when I inform the finder that he or she doesn’t have a meteorite, and then they start with the “But . . .” part. If someone asks for my advice, I’m happy to give it, but please don’t argue with me afterwards (It has only happened twice; most visitors are very gracious).

Please know that the last thing I want to do—ever—is snap at one of my fans, and so far I haven’t, not once. My dear old friend, musician Anne Husick, who was also my roommate for many years, and who considers me an impatient sod will doubtless scoff at this, but it’s true. And, anyway, aren’t roommates always the most critical? It’s a bit cliché-ish, but without loyal viewers I don’t have a show, and I really do like Meteorite Men fans. They are cool, and smart, interested in all kinds of things, and I enjoy getting to know them. Very occasionally, however, there comes a near-meltdown moment.

Signing a young fan's cast at the Tucson Electric Park

That point, for me, came during the second week, shortly after I sustained $550 in damages to two display tents down at the TEP. In order to prevent this happening a second time, we bought some extra-massive steel stakes with which to secure our new tents. My sales manager at TEP, Beth, called to tell me that the ground was too hard and they couldn’t get the stakes in, and Beth doesn’t give up easily. So, I left my main showroom and drove down to the TEP with a 12-lb sledgehammer. I was already tired, a little burned out, and my mind awash with the many pending deals and events. I may have become slightly defocused. I parked my truck, got the sledge, and started trying to pound in the stakes. The ground was like tempered concrete, and if such a thing doesn’t exist, it should. I was getting nowhere, so I rolled up my sleeves, put on my heavy work gloves and started wailing on the stake, with the sledge, and found it to be quite a good stress reliever. In the middle distance, someone was taking photos, and murmuring: “Look, it’s the guy from that meteorite show.” Not my most flattering moment.

I was out of breath, hot, making progress, and wondering if I was going to have the wherewithal to give all six of these stakes a solid pounding, when a young man walks right up to me—while I am swinging the sledge—with a rock in his hand, and asks me if it’s a meteorite. That was the closest I came to a meltdown. I’d already looked at about a hundred meteorwrongs—and one genuine meteorite—and was a little tired of doing that, but was still focused on being gracious to viewers who—after all—only want to know if they have found a bit of cosmic treasure. I said to the young man: “This isn’t the best time, could you please wait until I’ve finished, and then I’ll be happy to look at it,” while I was, in fact, thinking to myself: “Don’t get close to a Meteorite Man when he’s using a heavy sledge!”

It was not a meteorite, but I did get the stakes in.

Steve Arnold and the author doing a live interview with famed Tucson radio host John C. Scott

It has now been almost three weeks since we closed up shop for another year, and we are still not fully caught up. One of the problems with immersing yourself in Gem Show World is that regular company business, and normal day-to-day orders continue, unaware that we are holding a giant meeting of rockhound minds here in Tucson. Tired as we may be post-show, we have to suck it up and deal with the waiting orders. This year we also had four hundred books to ship out. Business is good, and it is great fun, so I am not complaining, but next year I really am going to try and take it easy and not be as busy. Just like gambling is going to leave Las Vegas, and The Empire State . . . well, you get the picture.

And this afternoon, I shall journey down to the excellent Tucson Festival of Books, where I will be signing copies of my new work, displaying space rocks, meeting viewers, and promoting our own Voice of Tucson. If you think you might have found a space rock, bring it on down. I promise not to snap at you, and I am definitely leaving the sledgehammer at home.

All photographs by and © Suzanne Morrison  www.backcountryphotographyaz.com

Of course, Steve and I had already known for a little while, but we’d been asked to sit quietly on our excitement and keep the news to ourselves. After all, an announcement in Variety is quite a bit grander than me just shouting from the balcony outside my showroom. Variety had been promised an exclusive on the Season Three announcement and I was under specific instructions not to say anything to anyone. In the age of Facebook and Twitter even one mention to one of my viewers could have resulted in the news spreading through the gem show, and then I would have been told to stand in the corner—an experience I was all too familiar with from British public school. I was, therefore, in a happy, yet awkward situation.

The Meteorite Men on location. Photograph by Pablo del Rio Larrain © Aerolite Meteorites LLC

With many Meteorite Men fans visiting the showroom daily, we kept a friendly and unofficial tally of the most popular questions, which were: “Are you doing a third season?” “Where can I get your show on DVD?” “Where are you going next?” and “Is this rock I found a real meteorite?” Oh, and “Can I please go hunting with you?” was in the running too. When viewers take the time to come visit me, and compliment me on the show, and are clearly enthusiastic about my work, and space rocks, and science programming in general, I really don’t feel comfortable lying to them. So, I found myself—for those few rather inconvenient days—dancing around the answer to Question Number One and saying things along the lines of: “We hope to hear news any day now,” or “We are cautiously optimistic,” and in some cases, “If you’d like to see more Meteorite Men please let our friendly network, Science Channel, know.”

So, when the Variety piece came out on the 8th, I was able to relax a little, fully embrace the news, and share it with our viewers. Debbie Myers, the radiant general manager of Science Channel telephoned to congratulate us, and I greatly enjoy Debbie’s company, so that was the best part for me. I told her that I couldn’t imagine having a better boss, and she told me that we should be very proud because most series don’t make it to a third season.

Filming in Kansas with Paul Sr. of "American Chopper" fame. Photograph by Suzanne Morrison © Aerolite Meteorite LLC

During Season Two of Meteorite Men Steve and I had our own cameraman and soundman. As he and I typically split up while hunting for space rocks, and head off in opposite directions, doing things our own way and at our own speed, we each had a separate camera/sound duo assigned to follow us. You end up sharing a lot of powerful moments with those guys: The excitement of a find; the unpleasant surprise of nearly stepping on a snake; the fatigue and disappointment of a long, unsuccessful day. Many times, my cameraman would stop me for a minute, and ask some perceptive off-the-cuff questions: “How are you feeling about this particular site Geoff?” or “What are your tactics going to be for the last hour of daylight?” Meanwhile, the poor soundman has to listen to me blather away, literally for months on end—and through headphones no less! That is dedication to your work.

I was a professional musician for many years, and I discovered that traveling around the world with a film crew is very similar to the band experience. The team works long days, shares moments of hardship and exuberance; there is socializing in bars after hours and, of course, the requisite retelling of amazing stories from other shoots and adventures.

When filming for the season is over, it can be quite sad. We had basically the same crew for six of the eight Season Two episodes and you get to know people, somewhat, when you work with them twelve hours a day, for long months on the road. When I said goodbye to Second Camera operator Tim Murphy in the shopping center of Heathrow Airport, it was the sixth country we’d visited together during a four-month period. We had camped in below-freezing temperatures inside a giant meteorite crater; consumed steaming hot coca leaf tea in the wilderness of the Atacama Desert (entirely legal there, I might add), pulled a 223-pound space rock out of a green field in Kansas, and excavated gaping holes deep in an ancient forest north of the Arctic Circle. Those are not everyday experiences, and I found myself liking and admiring these hardworking men whose job it was to make us look as good on screen as they could manage. I remember saying to Tim, as we shook hands, that I had particularly enjoyed his gentle sense of humor, and I hoped we would cross paths again.

The author under the bluest of skies, at an abandoned train station in the Atacama Desert. Photograph by Steve Arnold © Aerolite Meteorites LLC

Making quality television takes a lot of time. The gaps between seasons can be several months in length. Once filming is complete, scripts need to be written, footage edited, sound effects and music collected, narration recorded, and science facts checked. While those tasks are being carried out by the specialists in post-production, the others— the cameramen, soundmen, producers, and directors—still have to eat and pay rent, so they will likely take the next available project, and we don’t know if we will ever have the opportunity to work with them again.

We expect to commence filming Season Three in the late spring or early summer so, before too long, production will start “staffing up.” That is, hiring people who will work exclusively on that season. For my co-host and myself, it’s a bit like starting at a new school: You have some idea of what you are going to be doing, but you don’t know who you’ll be doing it with. I am a huge movie buff and I love the process of putting a program together. I’m also a photographer, have done a bit of independent film making, and used to work as an audio engineer. As such, I have learned a lot from our talented crews, and I’ve also shared plenty of laughs with them. A favorite moment in Chile was when one of our soundmen took me aside and quietly said: “It’s really fun to hang out with you and Steve. We usually aren’t allowed to talk to the talent.” I found his revelation shocking! What TV host would travel around the world and not want to share some drinks and good humor with these hardworking and highly entertaining professionals?

Fun on the road: Some serious off-roading in Australia's Northern Territories while filming Season Two (and I was driving!). Photograph by Steve Arnold © Aerolite Meteorites LLC

In a month or two I’ll be meeting the Season Three team, and we shall begin contemplating long journeys to strange places, in search of even stranger rocks from space. My job, at the moment—and Steve’s—is to research possible sites, sift through old science papers and reference works, and try to figure out where we should go in order to continue the hunt.

In my spare time—that being a rather narrow window between the end of Season Two and the beginning of the 2011 gem show—I wrote a book. And that reminds me that I forgot to include one of those very popular questions in my list and it was: “How can I find my own meteorite?” I put the answers to that in Meteorite Hunting: How To Find Treasure From Space, which was published on February 1. By very kind invitation of The Voice of Tucson, I shall be appearing at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend. I’ll have copies of the new work available for sale and signing, and I hope to meet some of the Meteorite Men viewers who reside here in town. Come on down and meet a genuine space rock (and I don’t mean me—I’ll have some fabulous meteorites on display). I will be at the TucsonCitizen.com booth Saturday and Sunday from 1 pm to 5 pm. The FOB is a great event. If you have not attended before, come along and experience it for yourself. If you care about words on paper, you will not be disappointed.

Last year we were given a tall order by Science Channel: produce six one-hour episodes in seven months. We weren’t quite sure how we’d manage but we did—barely. The final episode was delivered to the network just five days before its air date. Five of those episodes were filmed in the US, and one in Canada. It was exciting, challenging, occasionally dangerous, sometimes hysterically funny, and often exhausting.

Steve and Geoff on location filming "Meteorite Men," June 2010. Photo by Suzanne Morrison.

For Season Two we were given just five months to produce eight one-hour episodes, and five of those were to be filmed overseas. So, since late June, I have traveled more than 60,000 miles; walked on four continents; visited eight countries; seen ten states in the Union plus the District of Columbia; completed over twenty interviews for radio, print and social media; encountered extraordinary wildlife including camels, llamas, eagles, thousands of wild parrots, a lizard the size of a dog, kangaroos, emus, and a three-legged cat. Oh, and we got to guest star on American Chopper.

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As Douglas Adams noted in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “How ever fast the body travels, the soul travels at the speed of an Arcturan Mega-Camel.” In other words, while I was filming in the Arctic Circle, my overstimulated brain had not finished processing my adventures in the high Atacama Desert of Chile. While dozing in a tent in the Australian Outback, I had dreams that I was still exploring salt flats in the American West at 103 F, during a previous shoot. A couple of nights ago, I woke up in utter darkness at about 4:30 am (our call time on shoot days was typically 6 or 6:30 am) grabbed my alarm clock and thought to myself: “Which hotel am I in? What time is my flight!” before realizing that I was, in fact, at home in my own bed and there were no more flights. At least for this season.

The Meteorite Men on their Orange County Chopper. Season Two location shoot, June 2010. Photo by Suzanne Morrison.

Only one of our field team from Season One joined us for our 2010 “world tour,” and she—Senior Producer Sonya Gay Bourn—has always been the most indispensable member of the road crew. So, if we could keep just one of the original team, we wanted it to be her. During our first night on location for Season Two, we had a meet and greet with our new director, co-executive producer, director of photography, second camera, sound men, and camera tech. I raised my glass to Sonya and said: “If I found myself in the middle of the screaming wilderness during, say, the 19th Century, with thousands of ferocious warriors descending upon my position—weapons raised for attack—and could only have one person standing next to me, that person would be Sonya.” No disrespect to my stalwart co-host Steve Arnold, and I promise you, he feels the same way.

I have never met anyone like Sonya, and I am quite sure there is nobody in the world remotely like her. Brilliant, sassy, unconventional, striking, fearless, and resourceful, she is also an accomplished director, writer, and former stand-up comic. She also seems to know almost everyone on the planet, well, almost everyone worth knowing. Steve likes to joke that if we got into a serious jam—in the most desolate corner of the world—Sonya would know somebody at the local helicopter outfit and, with the aid of the sat phone and Blackberry from which she is never separated, would arrange an airlift for us in less than thirty minutes.

The Meteorite Men on the hunt. Atacama Desert location shoot, August 2010.

One of my favorite shows on television these days is Animal Planet’s Whale Wars—a gripping documentary series that chronicles the ecological group Sea Shepherd’s hair-raising attempts to curtail illegal Japanese commercial whaling. It’s one of the few programs that holds my attention from the first frame to the last. Those guys have nerves of steel and big eco hearts. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I discovered that two of the brightest lights in our 2010 crew were the cameramen from Whale Wars. We camped together for four nights in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Australian wilderness and they enthralled me—as we sat around the campfire—with harrowing tales of their adventures on board the Sea Shepherd vessels. Now that is a fireside chat.

Photo by Suzanne Morrison

Once I finally returned to my desert home one of my friends asked: “So was it fun? What did you see?”

I paused for a moment—jet lag trying to convince the parts of me traveling at the speed of an Arcturan Mega-Camel that I was still at least partly on the other side of the Earth—then replied: “Everything. I’ve seen everything.”

Meteorite Men Season Two premieres this coming Tuesday, November 2, on Science Channel and Science Channel HD. Air times here in Tucson are 6 pm with a repeat at 9 pm (Cox Digital); and 7 pm with a repeat at 10 pm (Comcast Digital).

I also recently completed a 16-day run at the 2010 Tucson gem and mineral shows (my company, Aerolite Meteorites, is an exhibitor). I am quite sure I have never been so tired in my entire life, and I really am looking forward to an upcoming vacation. “Yes, that would be a good idea, and make it soon,” cautioned Meteorite Men Executive Producer Kathy Williamson by phone last Wednesday night. She is hoping, I suppose, as we all are, that there will soon be good news about a second season. The odd part was, while receiving this suggestion from Kathy I was sitting in a black town car  rocketing from New York’s La Guardia airport to the very stylish Essex House hotel on Central Park South.

I had been planning on taking some time off—at least a day or two—this past week, but on that Monday morning my co-host Steve Arnold and myself both received a rather exciting invitation: Would we please be guests of Discovery Channel at the Lincoln Center premiere of their new series Life, narrated by Oprah Winfrey? Our network, Science Channel, is part of Discovery Communications, and we are kindly thought of as extended family. What a treat! I lived in New York City from many years and, in fact, my college graduation ceremony had taken place in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the same room in which we’d be viewing the premiere. It was nice to be back, though the snow covering Central Park was a bit of a shock after six years in sunny Tucson.

The Meteorite Men, Steve Arnold and Geoff Notkin, attending the Discovery "Life" premiere at Lincoln Center. Of course we were carrying space rocks! Photograph by Anne Husick © Aerolite Meteorites

A black SUV picked Steve and me up, in front of the Essex House, and whisked us the few chilly blocks to Lincoln Center. After registering, we were prepped for the red carpet. And what a surprising experience it was. Forget that mental image of a long red carpet stretching from a sidewalk up to the front of the venue. It’s winter in New York! The red carpet was indoors, hard up against a colorful backdrop of Discovery family logos. We were ushered through a small “gate” and then sandwiched—on the carpet—between the backdrop and an enthusiastic and animated group of photographers who seemed almost piled on top of each other. “Over here please.” “Look this way PLEASE gentlemen!” “Up here please, one more time this way,” and so on. Steve and I were carrying meteorites with us. Several of the photographers (and you have to imagine that these seasoned pros have pretty much seen everything) were so fascinated by our space rocks that they asked to touch or hold them, somewhat slowing down the proceedings, as the next guest star waited hard on our heels. We were gently ordered to “Move along please!” and had to shuffle, sideways and almost crab-like along the carpet, because of course you want to keep your face to the photographers and your back to the backdrop. Josh, one of our executives was there to greet us at the other end of the photographic gauntlet (our first red carpet by the way), and when he asked me how it was, I replied: “Very . . . bright.” Camera flashes a-plenty. We were even snapped by the official LIFE magazine photographer.

After a little wine, followed by a bizarre incident in which an incredibly rude bartender refused to serve me a glass of water, telling me: “There’s water in the fountain by the toilets,” we filed into Alice Tully for the screening. Discovery Networks founder and chairman John S. Hendricks delivered a greeting from the stage and—at one point—asked if all the Discovery family talent then present (“talent” is TV-speak for stars, hosts, co-hosts, etc.) would please stand. Steve and I did, there in Lincoln Center, along with about ten of our colleagues, turned around to face the audience seated mostly behind us, to be greeted by a stirring round of applause. What a happy moment it was! I really felt as if I was part of something special, and I am. Discovery Communications is the single largest provider of non-fiction programming in the world, reaching approximately one and a half billion people. That’s a lot of TV sets.

We then proceeded to the actual screening of Life, Episode One, complete with a score performed live on stage by the entire assembled New York Pops. Discovery really knows how to throw a party. Life premieres for the rest of the world on Sunday March 21 and I suggest that you watch this extraordinary piece of documentary art for yourself. I’m not even going to try and describe it. But I will tell you that my favorite part is with the tiny red tree frog.

After the screening, excellent food and fine wine flowed at a packed reception. The lovely Glenn Close was there, and Bill Klein and Jen Arnold stars of TLC’s hit series The Little Couple. It was a special pleasure to meet them as their series was also created by our production company, LMNO, and I enjoyed teasing Jen and Bill about “stealing” our esteemed original executive producer Ruth Rivin. It was Ruth who developed the original idea for Meteorite Men, but after the phenomenal success of The Little Couple (also one of her shows) we were no longer able to enjoy her undivided attention.

With our boss Debbie Myers, the charismatic President of Science Channel. Photograph by Anne Husick © Aerolite Meteorites

Also in attendance was the charming Dr. Michio Kaku of Sci-Fi Science—a fellow Science Channel host, and his elegant wife. I enjoyed reconnecting with fellow Brit Jeremy Wade the dashing star of River Monsters, and later enjoyed cocktails with Lorens de Groot of Animal Planet’s Whale Wars, which must surely be the most exciting show on television.

My long-time friend and former band mate Anne Husick, now of the Ronnie Spector Band, joined me as my guest, and she was beside herself with joy after meeting Captain Sig of Deadliest Catch (she’s not only met a million celebrities, but played in rock bands with most of them, and I’d never seen her so excited about anything). But chatting with Lorens was one of the high points of an evening full of high points. Here is a man who gave up a promising career with the Dutch police in order to take to the high seas and daringly interfere with illegal Japanese whale hunts. I liked him immediately. I traded one of my Meteorite Men t-shirts for one of his ultra-cool skull-and-crossbones-with-trident Sea Shepherd t-shirts and it was one of those unusual and happy exchanges where both parties feel as if they got the better end of the deal.

More on Lorens later. At the moment I’m focused on catching the next repeat of Whale Wars. Since I now really feel like part of the Discovery family, I want to be there to support my siblings’ shows.

When the final episode of Meteorite Men Season One aired, and the future of our show remained a mystery to me, I could not help but be reminded of Churchill. A personal hero, I often visited his home of Chartwell while a young lad living in England. My late mother, who always fervently encouraged my obsessive love of science and the arts, adored the walled gardens of his home, and his swans. I was fascinated by his silent painting studio—unfinished oils still on easels, and tubes of paint on the tables, as if Winston had just stepped out for a cigar.

Our one-hour pilot was filmed during the fall of 2008 and premiered in May of 2009. The ratings were higher than expected and we waited anxiously to hear, from our colleagues at Science Channel, if a series would be ordered. There was no news for some time, and then in August we received a personal phone call from Debbie Myers, the president of Science Channel, and a dedicated proponent of quality television and science education in schools. Science Channel was ordering six new one-hour episodes, and being a thoughtful executive with a gracious personal touch, Debbie wanted to deliver the news herself.

While creating the pilot, seventeen months elapsed from idea to premiere. When the good news arrived from Science, we we informed that the new series was to commence airing in January. “January of 2011?” I asked. “No, January of 2010.” So, after enjoying over a year and half to ponder, develop and film the pilot, we had to scramble to produce six new episodes in seven months. And scramble we did. It was tiring, exciting, sometimes exacting, but always rewarding. The final episode, in which my co-host Steve Arnold and I visit—sometimes independently, sometimes together—sites in Arizona, California, Texas and Virginia, was still being recut and edited less than a week before its premiere date. Just a little pressure.

The Meteorite Men on location, winter 2009. Photograph by Erika Carlson © Aerolite Meteorites

But it was all worth it. Meteorite Men Season One enjoyed very good ratings. Recent traffic on our websites has been about five times the daily average and we have received a great deal of fan mail. Even a few requests for signed photos! For each of the six weekly premieres (the first of which was January 20) I held a screening party at Tucson’s fabulous new night spot—Sky Bar. Owner Tony Vaccaro was wonderfully accommodating, allowing us to show each new episode on three widescreen high definition TVs. Each screening party was preceded by an open mic and by the end of the run of programs we were quite familiar with a new group of local musicians, and they seemed pleasantly amused by “The two guys who look for space rocks.” Two of the screenings fell during the annual Tucson gem and mineral shows, and those screenings were attended by so many colleagues from around the world—in for the gem show—that it was overwhelming.

A few friends attended every one of the six screenings. It was a treat to share the premieres with people I care about, and my father made it all the way from Dublin, Ireland for the final show (a student of classical music, he predictably complained about the open mic). Before the assembled crowd I gently admonished Dad: “It’s all his fault. He’s the one who first got me interested in astronomy by waking me up in he middle of the night to look through his telescope at the moons of Jupiter.”

When the final screening rolled around I almost felt as if I”d been back on tour with my rock ‘n’ roll band from the old days. “See you here next week! Meteorite Men on tour every Wednesday at Sky Bar.” And, in fact, to keep the rock ‘n’ roll theme current I even designed a Meteorite Men t-shirt, with the help of my company illustrator, Tim Arbon. On the front is a stark black silhouette of Steve and myself, holding our metal detectors, with “Meteorite Men 2009 North American Tour” printed in bold, friendly letters. On the reverse is a list of the places we visited while filming Season One (along with the home towns of our network, production company, and camera crew).

Supervising Producer for Meteorite Men, Bob Melisso, directs the action during the Odessa Crater shoot in Texas. Photograph by Suzanne Morrison © Aerolite Meteorites.

So now what? Perhaps the most frequently asked question during this exciting period of my life has been: “When do you find out about Season Two?” Well, we don’t quite know. Science Channel and LMNO Productions are the most encouraging and dedicated people we could possibly have worked with. We know how lucky we are. Everyone from production assistants, to narrators, to script supervisors, and executive producers put something of themselves into the show. The result is a feeling of collective accomplishment. Will it fly? Will there be a Season Two? I’ll let you know as soon as I know. In the meantime the show is in steady repeats on Science Channel, and you can find the Meteorite Men show time schedule here.

Just last week, I found out that Meteorite Men is also airing in the UK. Several old school friends and neighbors emailed to report: “I just saw you on the telly!” Knowing that some of my childhood pals are watching our adventures, back there in my old home country, makes me just a little wistful for those days when my mother was still alive and a little boy peered, enchanted, through his father’s telesope from the lawn of a chilly nighttime British garden.

Two years of work have finally come to fruition. Tonight at 7 pm local (9 pm Eastern and Pacific) my new series, Meteorite Men has its world premiere on Science Channel and Science Channel HD. I have a lot of friends and colleagues in Arizona who have some interest in my work and—much as I trust them to behave—it seemed a little impractical to hold a screening party at my house. Also, my cat, Bonnie, doesn’t really enjoy visitors as much as I do.

So, a meeting was arranged with Tony Vaccaro, a handsome and enthusiastic gentleman who owns Tucson’s stellar Brooklyn Pizza Company (a favorite of mine; yes it is real New York-style pizza, and I should know). Tony recently acquired the property that used to be North nightclub on Fourth Avenue, and transformed the space into a wonderful astronomy-themed and solar powered club by night and cafe by day —Sky Bar. With a telescope on the roof beaming space images downstairs onto widescreen TVs, Sky Bar was clearly, and immediately, the best possible location choice for a series of Meteorite Men screening parties. The first of those is tonight: 6 pm pre-party with live music courtesy of Sky Bar’s open mic, followed by the series world premiere at 7 pm sharp. I have done a lot of television, but there is something different about this: it is exciting, and somewhat bewildering.

One of my most satisfying professional projects in recent years was to design, edit, and publish the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Collection Catalog, in association with eminent meteorite scholar and geologist Dr. Arthur Ehlmann of TCU, Fort Worth. Oscar Monnig was one of the greatest meteorite collectors of all time. His family owned a chain of department stores in Fort Worth; Oscar was a successful, admired, and well-liked businessman, but his true passion was space rocks. During the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, Oscar amassed one of the largest private meteorite collections in the world. In an act of amazing generosity he left the collection, along with a sizable cash endowment, to TCU. His friend—and now my friend—Dr. Ehlmann became the custodian of the collection, and a portion of the endowment was used to build a truly beautiful meteorite museum at TCU.

The great Oscar Monnig. Photograph courtesy of Nancy Arnold.

Oscar didn’t have any children of his own, but in the course of my work, I happened to meet Oscar’s goddaughter, Nancy, who now lives here in Arizona. A charming and gracious lady, she immediately became a great supporter of our Monnig catalog project, and made available to me a series of historic, and never-before-seen photos of Oscar. We included them in the book, and they added a splendid personal dimension to it.

At the Tucson gem show a couple of years ago, we held a publication party for the catalog, and Dr. Ehlmann traveled out here from Texas to sign copies. Nancy drove down from Phoenix for the event, and brought with her a most extraordinary gift: Oscar’s favorite cufflinks. Elegant, sliver and black, and speckled with a field of small stars they are, for me, a tangible connection with one of my personal heroes.

Yesterday, Nancy sent me an email from Phoenix. She congratulated my co-host, Steve Arnold, and myself on the premiere of Meteorite Men. She also wrote: “Oscar is smiling at you from heaven.” I’m a scientist, and perhaps not the world’s most spiritual guy, but her comment was extremely moving for me.

So, tonight, when I watch the most important project of my career sparkle onto the widescreen TV at Sky Bar, I’ll be wearing Oscar’s cufflinks. I said to Nancy that if Oscar really is watching over us we cannot fail.

Please come down to Sky Bar tonight, say hello to the Logical Lizard, and raise a glass with me to Oscar and the other pioneers who dreamed of holding a fallen star in their hands. Without them, I would never have made it here.

But really, I am joking. It is an honor and a privilege to find yourself in a situation where major companies have put a great deal of money, time and effort into making a rather unique adventure series about you and your buddy. Steve had me laughing the other day when he said: “I want our show to be the best meteorite hunting program on television!” It is a most unusual topic for a series, but I do know one thing: wherever I go and whatever kind of people I meet there seems to be a universal fascination with our rather odd profession: “Really? You look for meteorites. You mean, like shooting stars?”

The Logical Lizard (left) and professional meteorite hunter Steve Arnold scouting locations for the new "Meteorite Men" TV series. Photograph by Margaret Haddad.

The fact that our work is so unusual and specialized means we are actively involved in nearly every aspect of pre-production: locations, equipment, wardrobe, logistics, scheduling. We even have the pleasure of inviting some favorite academics to appear on the show with us. We are airing on the Science Channel, so Meteorite Men has to be a lot more than just an adventure series. It’s a good mix: Steve and I go out to the wild places, test new gear, develop hunting techniques, do our research, hike, dig, meet weird and colorful characters along the way, and when each adventure draws to a close we head to a lab or university to meet with one of our colleagues in academia. Will any of our finds help shed light on the mysteries of the universe? Well, maybe not every episode, but each fragment of new knowledge is a piece in the puzzle, and it doesn’t hurt to dream.

And anyway, Steve feels people are tuning in to be entertained, not to have the spotlight of universal understanding turned upon them. We’ll figure it out.

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.

Geoff and Steve: Two gearheads move out for a day of exploration. The big disk behind my head is part of one of our specialized metal detectors. Photograph by Caroline Palmer.

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.

The big storms do leave behind some lovely sunsets. Photograph © Geoffrey Notkin

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.

I have been presented with a unique opportunity to document something a little more unusual—the making of new television adventure series. In the coming months I will be sharing, exclusively with TucsonCitizen.com readers, an unabridged, behind-the-scenes diary about how we created my new show. I hope you find the details, mishaps, and insights to be interesting and entertaining.

Just a few days ago my expedition partner, Steve Arnold, and I received a most important phone call from Debbie Myers, President of Science Channel. A little over a year earlier she had ordered a one-hour pilot from our production company, LMNO of Encino, California. The pilot, Meteorite Men, was a success and so Debbie was calling to share exciting news with us: We were going to series.

The Meteorite Men, Steve Arnold and Geoff Notkin, on location in Kansas. Photograph by Caroline Palmer © Aerolite Meteorites

So, Steve and I will be researching, brainstorming, building and testing new equipment, traveling to strange and possibly dangerous places, engaging in some requisite goofing around and, of course, digging for space rocks.

I am more than a little bewildered by the vast amount of work that we must now accomplish but, as Steve is fond of saying: “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Come along for the ride. Adventures ahead.

Oh, and while you’re waiting, please check out these exclusive video clips from Meteorite Men, courtesy of Science Channel.