Don't tell Mom

Don't tell Mom but I've been running around the locks of Panama shooting video for the Ms Statendam's cruise ship videos. It's been a lot of fun and yes it is dangerous. At 5am while the ship is at sea Kenny, my South African roomate, and I climb out of the side of the ship and board a pilot boat. The pilot boat takes us to a pier where a local driver takes us to each of the three sets of Panamanian locks. The cruise ship is pulled through the locks by what looks like locamotive trains. We have a guide inside the canal who tells us where we can and cannot step as there is high voltage and moving trains to deal with. We wear hard hats and safety vests while shooting. Kenny is shooting the stills that will be sold later in the gallery. On one of the sets of locks we get the local driver to take us to the top of a hill where I shoot time lapse video of the ship as it goes through the locks. We do this process every cruise as the weather is always different and the idea behind the videos is that it is all filmed this cruise. It's quite the adventure. I heard from security that the first time we went through the canal that a man lost the tips of his fingers on a cable. Yikes. I got to walk across one of the locks to get to the other side. It is a very narrow catwalk with large gaps between the railings. It was a about a 200 foot drop to the bottom. Sorry Mom! I'm being careful and I'm very well fed on the ship.