Dave Morris NewsOK.com Blogging Community

It's been awhile since I posted a blog. I spent April and May and I'll throw June in there as well doing some blogging and pinging and all that stuff. Then something went down on Second Street that changed things. However, back to the blog. Yesterday we had two notable Oklahomans in the OPUBCO Studios: Bart Conner and Jane Jayroe. Bart will provide video blogs for NewsOK during the Olympics next month in China. He leaves later this week. He stopped by to shoot some promos and to shoot a video with Jenni Carlson. Bart is one of the nicest, most down to earth people you'll ever meet. Good about remembering people's names, quick to shake your hand and offer a smile. Jane Jayroe, of course, is a former Miss America and came in to appear on an upcoming episode of The Ladies' Room.

1) It's another very cool event for Oklahoma City. When you see the Olympic rings on the hillside across the Oklahoma River you realize it's a big time event.

2) Good people. The local officials we spoke with were very gracious and talked happily about their sport and the wonderful facilities of the Chesapeake Boathouse. I ran into Shane Hamman, two time Olympian and American record holder in weight lifting. Also ran into Hal McKnight from Wheeler Dealer fame and a big time proponent of the local trails system. Great to catch up with both of those guys.

For more discussion, check out OKCtalk.com, as always there is a good thread of discussion on that site.

3) And I'll give you a huge reason I was disappointed this morning with the Olympic trials: ridiculously limited media access. Cameras were not allowed to shoot the trials themself. Cameras could not enter the area under the bridge nor access the Olympic Village area with the athletes. In fact we were told the athletes were so focused we would have to schedule an interview through the officials and it was unlikely they would want to talk until later.

It's for the Olympics, I get that.

But the only video we could shoot was of the boats floating on the other side of the bridge, the non-competitive side, some cutaway shots of athletes from a distance and the regular people in the Olympic Experience area.

Seriously. It was frustrating and silly. Good thing MSNBC is airing highlights from these trials later this summer.

UPDATE: Here's the vid from Friday morning. Wish there were more we could shoot...