Postcard | On the mic on the mic

(Waterbury, Vermont) What do you do when you’re covering a game in Boston on Thursday night, you have to be on a podcast the next day at 2 p.m., and there’s more than a five-hour drive and a border between one and the other ?

Option A: Get up very early on Friday morning and try to get to downtown Montreal in time to register Exit Zone. This scenario involves providing a cushion in case of waiting at customs, in the event of a traffic jam around the island of Montreal and to find parking near the studios of 98.5 FM. Not to mention the preparation time for said podcast.

Option B: Leave later, but drive very, very fast. This scenario involves providing a cushion to negotiate with the police, perhaps also with the tug if ever the vehicle is seized.

Option C: Leave at a reasonable time, drive at a reasonable speed, and stop along the way to remotely record the podcast.

After thoughts, prayers and discussions, it was agreed that option C would be chosen. It should be understood that the coverage of a match does not end at 9:45 p.m., at the sound of the final siren. Time to do the interviews and write texts that hold up minimally, you can easily leave the arena around 11:30 p.m., if not midnight. And after an evening of work, you don’t necessarily go straight to bed, because the adrenaline has to drop a little. In short, Scenario A was not ideal.

Check-in went smoothly, especially since the restaurant has a second floor where there were no other customers on this Friday afternoon. As if we were expected there.

Luckily, the establishment has a storefront in front of a convenience store where it must sell well all that Vermont produces in craft beer. We didn’t think we’d stop there, but Charlie was staring at us through the window, and you understand that it’s impossible to turn your back on a dog who looks sad.

All that to say, coverage of a game in Boston isn’t exactly torture. The city is beautiful, but the drive through Vermont is even more so. This bucolic state protects its landscapes with a ban on commercial signage – basically, a business is not allowed to display advertising anywhere but on its own property. Maine, Alaska and Hawaii also have similar laws.

The effects of the law are obvious when we arrive at the border with New Hampshire and the signs of a motel and a gas station stand before us like Stonehenge.

We also celebrated Thursday the 55th anniversary of the adoption of this law. That’s good to say.