Steve Fossett: The Podcast (w/ Richard Branson!)

OK, so we didn't do a regular show this week. We've got something better.

We just put together a special edition that features parts of my interviews that include details and discussions that didn't make it into my coverage. The whole 45-minute show includes chats with:

* Sir Richard Branson, Virgin mogul and friend/financier of Fossett
* Ex-CBOT chairman Patrick Arbor, friend/adventure pal of Fossett
* A choice piece of press briefing from Civil Air Patrol's Cynthia Ryan
* Chat with Gary Derks, spokesman for the NV Division of Emergency Management.

Click here to hear it or right-click here to download it and listen to it at your leisure. Or, as you ought to, subscribe to "The Strip" via iTunes by clicking here.

A Productive Trip Indeed

Figured I'd list the links to the rest of my work from the Fossett trip:

* NYT: Profile of the Flying M Ranch. For print and online on 9/8.
* NYT: Interview with Sir Richard Branson interview on Fossett. For online on 9/7.
* Las Vegas Weekly: Column on Fossett, Nevada and conspiracies. Posted 9/7.
* Wired News: A geeky look at the technology employed in the search. Posted 9/7.
* KNPR: I was interviewed by Michael Squires for "State of Nevada" on Fossett. Aired 9/7.

I plan to listen to my recorded audio on Saturday and decide what might be worth putting out as a podcast. Not sure if there's that much interest or not.

A Roving Reporter's Diet

As I was cleaning out my rental car in Reno this afternoon before my flight, pitching empty bottles and wrappers, I realized that I'd eaten pretty miserably while on this 48-hour Steve Fossett junket. I wondered if I could recount the horror of my diet since I departed Wednesday afternoon. I had, by the by, chopped up a nice salad and bought a pre-cooked chicken for dinner at our stead for that night, so when I'm not working around the clock I do like to eat somewhat properly.

Here it is, in order:

Wednesday evening

3 bags of Southwest peanuts in flight
1 cup of water
1 bag of spicy beef jerky
1/2 bag of gummy bears left over from San Diego trip last weekend
1/2 bag of almonds left over from SD trip last weekend
1 bottle of water
1 bottle of V8 tomato juice
1 bottle Diet 7-Up
6 Chicken McNuggets & fries, both w/ranch dressing
1 medium cup of half water, half light lemonade from McD fountain
1 stick of "5" Cobalt gum by Wrigley

Thursday

1 cup of coffee
1 blueberry muffin
1 large orange-flavored energy drink
1 large AM/PM coffee of 1/2 French vanilla cappuccino, 1/2 regular coffee
1 bottle of V8 tomato juice
1 bottle of Diet 7-Up
1 box of Good N Plentys
1 package of Keebler soft chocolate chip cookies
1 stick of "5" Cobalt gum by Wrigley

Friday

1 bottle of water
1 bag of Famous Amos cookies
1 roast beef sandwich on sour dough with mustard & mayo
1 small bowl of mixed fruit
1 cup of water in flight
1 stick of "5" Cobalt gum by Wrigley

Total hours of sleep in 2 nights at the Best Western Minden: 6.5

Once I got home, I enjoyed the aforementioned salad I intended to eat on Wednesday with bacon ranch dressing with some diced chicken. Oddly, I wasn't hungry enough to eat all of it!!!

Tomorrow we're going to Bagelmania!!! Woo-hoo! Good to be home!

Fossett Sightings Abound!

Here we go... A minister near El Paso, Texas, emailed me this morning saying he'd seen Steve Fossett at a filling station down there in a Ford Mustang. He left his number, so I called.

The fellow, whom I will not name because I know he means well, explained he turned around and, "Boy gosh, that guy was Steve Fossett!" The man he saw pulled right out in front of my "source" in a vintage black Ford Mustang convertible and got on Interstate 10. "The guy looked a little spacy," I was told. "I wondered if he realized they're lookin' for him."

I am NOT making this up. He also said, "I sure hope it was him. I'd sure hate if we lost him. He's a great man."

I called Nevada Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan, spokeswoman for the massive search, to let her know.

"We've getting those by the hundreds," Ryan said. "There's a psychic in Ohio who knows where he is and can lead us to him if we'd only follow her instructions. We have someone devoted to nothing else but these sorts of sightings. If they could only put this to work on the lottery. I guess we just have to delight in the diversity of humanity and give everyone their shot."

I asked if she wanted this fellow's name and number and she said, "No, not really. We can't even wade through what we have."

Imagine if Fossett is never found!

Departing the Fossett Watch

Whew! I am done! After I post this, I'm going to take some pix of quaint Minden and then head to Reno to fly home. I'm off Fossett duty until there's some definitive development.

I just filed to the NYT website a piece based off my chat with Sir Richard Branson this morning. That material should appear here in the next hour or so in some form or fashion. I may post the audio from that chat later, although I suspect it's kind of rough as Branson and I were both on cell phones and he was in Europe. There's some real news out of this, including some of Fossett's future plans. If it doesn't get posted there, I may post some of what was cut here after I get back to Vegas.

Also, I just filed my piece for tomorrow's newspaper about Barron Hilton's Flying M Ranch with insight from some interesting folks who have been there. I imagine it'll post on the Web site in the next several hours, too. Quite a place.

In addition, I had a kick-ass chat with Peter Frampton this morning that was so good, we're playing it on "The Strip" next week and holding the Steve Wynn bit for another week. (Sorry, Wynn-o-philes, but your wait shall be rewarded, I pledge.) And if you don't care about Frampton, you should know I knew very little of him until about 10 p.m. last night and still I assure you you'll love this discussion.

OK. I'm out for now. The Best Western Minden needs my room for some other inbound journo.

Frampton, Fossett, Forbes and Friess

Amid all the rest of what I'm doing here, I am interviewing Peter Frampton this morning for an upcoming episode of "The Strip" podcast. And here's the weirdest thing: In doing my research for this chat last night, I noticed that Frampton and Fossett share a birthday, April 22. Now what the hell are the odds of that? Almost as strange as the experience of leaving messages with a reasonably confused secretary from Steve Friess for Steve Forbes about his pal Steve Fossett, perhaps?

Keep watch on this space. We should be publishing some new Fossett details I learned from Sir Richard Branson this morning on the Times site and I'll alert when that happens. Meanwhile, here's my piece in the Times today.

Mid-Air Over Minden

The reflection from a window of me with the plane I went up in today. Cool, huh?

So here's the thing. I went up on a four-seat Cessna this afternoon with a local flight instructor who told us he knew the location of the fancy Flying M Ranch, owned by Paris Hilton's grandpa and where Steve Fossett took off. I wanted to see it. I shared the tab for this flight with journalists from the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Times of London, lovely blokes both.

Sadly, for $200 an hour our pilot was a bit incompetent. We wandered through the region searching for it and couldn't find it. My cell phone was working from up above, so I text messaged Miles and my "Petcast" co-host Emily to get them to find me GPS coordinates. We ended up with five different sets of coordinates, the final one of which was probably the most precise although all would have been in the right area. Emily, in fact, managed to spot the thing on a Google Earth map, but by the time we had that specific a pinpoint, our pilot said he really had to get back in for another appointment! Later, one of the Civil Air Patrol officials expressed bafflement that the pilot couldn't find a landmark that obvious and easy to spot; it's apparently right at a fork in a very prominent river. Oh well. I started to think the place was like the island on "Lost" and worried that if we did find it, we'd have to kill a legion of Others to get away.

Anywho, it was still a nice ride that gave us good perspective on the vast and difficult terrain the planes are facing as they seek Fossett. And I may have set myself good for some future assignments with the British newspapers, too. Always working an angle, I am.

Here are some more pix, each of which can be enlarged by clicking on them:

The mountainous terrain (above) and the flat area. The greenery you see is hay farms.