E:60 With Rachel Nichols

I was sitting in the makeshift locker room in Hawaii this February and noticed Rachel Nichols coming toward me with a half smile on her face. At first I felt like the kid who waves at a girl and the next second finds out she is looking at the guy just past him, especially since she is with ESPN and I'm in a locker room filled with guys like Eli Manning and Larry Fitzgerald. Then to my surprise, she made her way straight to me. For a second I thought I had it figured out.

A couple months earlier Tanner, an undisclosed reporter divulging phone numbers, and myself were having a few beers and making prank calls. After a few calls Andrea Kramer's number came up and we had a great plan. The message that was left went something like this. "Hey this is Chris Cooley, I just left the bar where I was sitting next to Rachel Nichols, she was talking crazy shit about you. Rachel says your the worst, manliest reporter she's ever seen and she can't stand to work with you another day! Hiccup! Laugh, laugh, laugh." Click. It was a call that we found funny enough to repeat every couple weeks. Actually it's still funny while I'm writing this and Andrea will probably be getting a call in the next couple days.

So I was guessing she had talked with Andrea and figured out who was making the nonsense calls and was coming to confront me about it. But to my surprise she came to talk about E60 coming to my house to do a segment for their show. I was a little relieved. Actually, I was pretty excited about the whole deal and after some of the details, thought it would be pretty cool and easy to get done. In April they came over to my house in Virginia and spent some time with us trying to get everything together. They filmed interviews with Christy, Tanner and myself. We spent a couple hours talking to them on camera, then they wanted to film me painting in my art room. They also filmed me pretending to work at the computer, like I was doing a blog. All was fine and for the last couple months we have been recording every E60 on TV, never to see our episode.

Then a few weeks ago I got a call from the producer saying they wanted to come to Wyoming and I could take Rachel fishing and we could do some more stuff. We met in Cody Wyoming and I had a great plan to take them up to the spot where I caught all the fish the other day. They said they didn't have enough time so we had to arrange going back to my property and fishing on the river there. I guaranteed no fish, but they said it would still look cool and no one would care, whatever.

What didn't get explained to them was that it was a hell of a hike to get from the spot where you drop off the four wheelers. They had to drag their asses and the camera shit about a half a mile over the rocky hillside to get down to the river. So much for not enough time! I then proceeded to untangle Rachel's line for the next 30 minutes while we pretended to be fishing. Sorry Rachel, I know you did get better at it, but you casted like a seven year old girl with an arm full of barbies.After the fishing it was like a barrage of doing everything I like to do in my life, but in intervals of 15 minutes. Just enough time to not do a good job of it. We painted, we did pottery, we hiked around, we fished, we talked and talked. I ended up spending about seven hours with the crew, but it was actually a really fun day. Everyone I worked with was great, Rachel was awesome and at one point she actually turned into intern girl and ran to Subway to get everyone lunch.

I just hope everything turns out okay for the segment. Before the crew left I had asked them if they thought my thing would be cool no less than 25 times. Whatever, but hopefully I'll love it. The show will be coming out in the next couple months, so I will keep everyone informed on when to set their Tivo.

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